


Catching Moments

by Maayacola



Category: Johnny's Entertainment
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-17 19:45:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1400227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maayacola/pseuds/Maayacola
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shige never expected to feel this close. It's sort of like falling, and sort of like flying, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catching Moments

"I need your help," Ryo breathed into the phone. "Like, I seriously will die of mortification and despair if you do not save my life."

Shige sighed, and ran a hand through his short hair. "What do you need, Nishikido?" he asked, knowing that in the long run, it didn't really matter, because he would do it regardless, because he could never seem to squash that urge to please Ryo, to earn his friendship. Shige just hoped it didn't involve dressing in drag, getting stung by jellyfish, or him and Koyama being Ryo's wingmen at that sketchy-as-heck bar that Ryo liked, even though the floors hadn't been mopped since the mid-nineties and the women mostly looked like troll dolls. Those had all been terrible nights, and Shige was pretty sure he deserved some kind of Nobel Peace Prize for 'Awesome Kouhai' or something like that. 

But, Ryo hardly ever admitted to needing help, either, so maybe that was why Shige was so inclined to give it.

"You're smart, right?" Ryo said, sounding a lot calmer after hearing the resignation in Shige's tone. "You're like, a lawyer."

"Um," Shige replied, scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably. "I'm not terrible at studying."

"Perfect!" Ryo replied. "Because that's what I need help with."

"Studying?" Shige whistled, incredulously. "What on earth, Nishikido, could get you interested in studying?"

"Revenge!" Ryo howled into the phone, and Shige held it away from his ear and cradled his face in his other hand.

This was going to be stupid.

"Do you remember where my apartment is? Let me give you directions."

***

"So then our manager told us we were going to do a trivia show, me and Pi, I mean, and Jin and Nakamaru are going to be our competitors. Now, we both know Jin isn't much of a threat..."

"Akanishi couldn't think his way out of a plastic bag even if he was suffocating," Shige replied, because in his opinion, it was true. 

"Yeah, weed is about the only thing Jin can do out of a plastic bag," Ryo agreed, "But, seriously, Pi isn't the brightest crayon in the box, either."

"Hot pink is pretty bright," Shige joked, and Ryo beamed at him. 

"Well, okay, let's stop using metaphors. I love them, but Jin and Pi have about four brain cells between them most days, unless they've been drinking, and then it's three. But Nakamaru, on the other hand...he's smart. Not as smart as you, but definitely smarter than me."

"Okay," Shige said, a little embarrassed that Ryo thought so highly of him, and wondering if it was just because Ryo didn't know him that well. "So..."

"They're all Japanese history questions," Ryo told him, hefting a heavy, intimidating tome out of his backpack and dropping it with a thud on Shige's kitchen table. "Help me, please. I can't lose."

"Why can't you lose?" Shige asked. "You mentioned revenge." 

"Oh you know me," Ryo said with a tiny, secretive cackle. "Always out for revenge." He avoided Shige's eyes and Shige's question, instead opening the book to a random page. 

Shige did kinda know Ryo, although sometimes, like right then, when he was acting weird and crazy in Shige's kitchen, he wished he didn't. "Nishikido?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Ryo said quietly, and Shige's brows furrowed together. 

"Alright then," Shige replied, after a moment's silence. "When do you want to start?"

Ryo gave him a look of relief that made Shige's stomach clench with curiosity. "How about now?" Ryo asked, and Shige pulled the book over to himself with a sigh. 

"Alright, Nishikido, pay attention."

 

***

 

As the two weeks until the variety show competition passed, Shige struggled to drill random facts about daimyo and samurai and the Fujiwara lineage into Ryo's head, while Ryo attempted-- well, Shige wasn't quite sure what Ryo was attempting, but his only guesses were 'driving Shige to suicide' or 'driving Shige to homicide'.

"So, Nishikido, who was the first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate?"

"Get a haircut," Ryo replied into his coffee, and Shige sighed. 

"You have the patience of a saint," Yamapi said to Shige, leaning onto Shige's shoulder. "Nishikido would be six feet under already if it were me tutoring him."

"Yeah, because I would have been buried under the devastating weight of your stupidity," Ryo snapped, before he pushed his hand through his hair with frustration. 

"Nishikido," Shige finally says. "Who was the first shogun?"

"I don't know," Ryo grunted, before gulping the entirety of his coffee. "Was is Gackt? He's certainly old enough."

Yamapi snorted, and pillowed his head on his arms, laying face down on the table. "Tokugawa Ieyasu, right?"

Shige and Ryo both turned to look at Yamapi, who could somehow feel the weight of their combined stares. "That's...that's correct, Yamapi."

Yamapi gave them a peace sign without lifting his head, and Ryo scratched the back of his neck. "I think it's bed time," he mumbled, and got up to go refill his coffee cup.

"Well, maybe if you'd slept last night instead of drinking yourselves stupid," Shige muttered, pushing his glasses up on his nose, because they had slid down _again_.

"Can it, old man," Ryo growled, stomping off toward the coffee machine while Yamapi texted Jin weird pictures of his arm hair. 

Shige sometimes wondered what he had done to deserve this.

 

***

"I'm going to kill him," Shige told Koyama, who listened sympathetically. "I'm going to kill him and no one will find the body, because I took a criminal forensics class as a distribution requirement and I know all the places the police will look."

Koyama looked up from from his knitting and frowned at Shige. "Calm down, Shige. Just tell him you can't study with him anymore."

"I can't do that." Ryo's serious face when he'd avoided Shige's question flashed in his mind. Whatever reason was behind it, Ryo really wanted to win, and it was Shige's job, as a good kouhai, to help him. Plus Shige'd always, always, wanted Ryo to like him, to spend time with him, even if he didn't know why he wanted that. And even if they didn't get much done in the way of studying, and he was frustrated with Ryo's lack of focus, he had to admit it was kind of...fun. "What are you knitting, by the way?"

"Well, if you can't quit, just look on the bright side! Ryo-chan is kind of playful, right?" Koyama looked down at the amorphous sky blue yarn project in his lap and smiled. "I'm making a sweater for Nyanta."

Shige blinked twice at the creation, and turned his head sideways. He could sort of see it, he supposed. "He is," Shige admitted. "He's only told me to get a hair cut twice this week."

"Progress!!" Koyama cheered, and Shige felt his bad mood evaporating more and more by the second. "Ryo-chan is the only member Shige isn't close to, right? Keep trying, Shige!!!"

Shige sighed and grinned. "I will," Shige promised, and Koyama put down his knitting needles. 

"You're too nice, Shige," Koyama said, and Shige looked at him in disbelief.

"Look who's talking!" Koyama blushed, and Shige laughed, and Koyama threw a couch cushion at him.

 

***

Ryo was a lot more serious when Yamapi wasn't around, so Shige started pop-quizzing Ryo when they found themselves alone, pulling random questions out of a notebook full of facts he had stayed up all night assembling. Ryo was getting a lot of them right, too, and Shige wasn't sure how until he caught Ryo studying one morning when he came in earlier than he was supposed to. Ryo looked up quickly when he opened the door, looking guilty at getting caught doing something as nerdy as studying, but relaxed when he saw it was Shige.

"Oh, it's just you," Ryo mumbled, and Shige wasn't sure if he should feel offended that he wasn't worth a second glance, or pleased that Ryo didn't feel like he he had to pretend around him.

"Yup, just me," Shige said dryly. "How goes the studying?"

"Ugh," Ryo replied. "I will never beat Nakamaru. He has all that extra space for brain matter in his nose-- I can't compete with that."

If it had been any other member but Ryo, Shige would have clapped them on the shoulder and told them to cheer up, or maybe made a joke and offered a shoulder rub. But between him and Ryo, there'd always been a physical barrier when the cameras were off, and Shige always felt verbally inept around Ryo anyway, maybe because Ryo always spoke so cleverly and carefully. "You'll do fine."

"Fine? I don't want to do fine. I hate coming in second," Ryo grouched, and Shige wanted to smile at his childish expression. He rarely got to see this side of Ryo when it was just the two of them. 

"Why's this so important to you? It's just a variety show quiz?" Shige asked, and Ryo's eyes darkened and the petulant expression dropped from his face, to be replaced with something more serious.

"I know it's just a little joke quiz, and that winning or losing it won't mean anything in the long run, but...I've already lost to him once, and I don't know if I can...take it again." Ryo's voice trailed off at the end, and Shige felt uncomfortable, like he was watching something private, like he shouldn't be seeing that look on Ryo's face. 

As far as Shige knew, Ryo didn't have any issues with Jin-- they'd all been hanging out as recently as a week ago, long after Ryo had asked for help to study for the quiz. But for the life of him, he couldn't figure out what kind of problem _anyone_ would have with Nakamaru. "If you need anything..." Shige said awkwardly, and Ryo pulled himself out of his mood with a visible shake.

"Just helping me study is good," Ryo said, staring at the wall behind Shige instead of meeting Shige's gaze. "It's enough. I don't need a heart to heart or anything like that."

Shige nodded, and Ryo, maybe seeing the movement out of the corner of his eye, licked his lips. "You never have to fill the silence," Ryo said. "I like that about you."

Shige didn't know what to say to that, at all, but it made his neck flush with embarrassment and pleasure he couldn't suppress. Shige didn't know why he always sought Ryo's approval, but every time he earned praise from the older man... "Who wrote one of the world's first novels, the very famous 'Tale of Genji'?" Shige asked, slipping his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

Ryo laughed. "You are so awkward," Ryo told him, face softening with what, if Shige didn't know any better, he would say was affection. "And the answer is Murasaki Shikibu."

"You should have gone to University," Shige informed him. "You've got a good memory."

"No time. Between NewS and Kanjani and dramas and all that stuff, I have no time to even sleep."

"You could have time, if you partied less," Shige said, with a teasing tone. Ryo looked surprised, and maybe Shige had never talked to him like that before, because he'd never quite felt comfortable to.

"Whatever," Ryo said with a snort. "Besides, university is for nerds with no life, like you."

"And nerds like Yamapi?" Shige said, and Ryo smiled wryly. "Besides, I am not a nerd. I am just intellectually curious. Some of us in this room right now could do with being a bit more academically motivated right now."

"Uh-huh," Ryo replied, rolling his eyes. "Shut up, nerd. And get a hair cut. You look like a pinecone."

Ryo walked out of the meeting room, leaving his book in the chair he'd been sitting in, and Shige walked over and picked it up, contemplating the post-it notes and bookmarks all throughout the book.

"Nerd, huh?" Shige said to himself, and smiled.

 

***

Shige wasn't sure why he had come today. He supposed he just wanted to see if all their hard work had paid off, or if Ryo was totally going to blank on stage. But either way, even backstage the lights were impossibly bright.

It was a close competition. Yamapi and Jin were too busy making dorky fish faces at each other to really pay attention to the game, and they seemed to be having some sort of contest over the female host, trying their best to make her burn alive with embarrassment by flirting outrageously and insulting each other. It was interesting to see Yamapi act like that on camera, but Jin always did bring out what could dubiously be called the _best_ in Yamapi.

Ryo and Nakamaru though, were intensely involved in the quiz show, spouting off answers before the male host could finish the questions. Nakamaru looked slightly bewildered, but Ryo had on his concentrating face, the one Shige had seen him wear when he was trying to figure out a chord for a song he was writing, or scribbling lyrics on the napkins he got with his bento from the conbini.

When Ryo won, Shige felt like he would burst with pride, which was weird, because he wasn't sure when he had gotten so emotionally invested in the whole trivia show thing. But he _had_ , somehow, gotten invested, and to see all of Ryo's hard work pay off was...kinda fulfilling, and Shige kinda liked the look of satisfaction on Ryo's face, too, even though he usually associated that expression with his own public humiliation.

He waited around until the show ended, leaning against the studio wall pretending like he was supposed to be there. No one questioned him, probably because he was a member of NewS with Yamapi and Ryo. 

Ryo spotted him about five minutes before the end of the broadcast, and his eyebrows climbed up his face with something that Shige thought might be pleasure. He never knew with Ryo, because he was too hard to read.

When the lights went down, and the cameras ceased their filming, Ryo lazily walked over to Shige, his hair falling into his face as he walked. Shige inexplicably wanted to brush it back, but he didn't.

"Shige," Ryo said, and he rested his hand on Shige's shoulder calmly, his face in a gentle smile. "Really, thanks."

"It was nothing," Shige replied, but his face blushed with a little bit of pleasure, and Ryo's smile widened.

"I honestly couldn't have done it without you," Ryo asserted, and then his hand on Shige's shoulder curled into a fist, and he punched him in the arm. "You're a good friend."

Shige's insides felt all gooey and warm, like he'd just won some terrific prize. A good friend. He liked the sound of it.

Ryo's cell phone rang, and he accepted the call, holding the phone up to his ear. "Hey Jin, how's being fat _and_ a loser feel today?"

Shige heard a few curse words come out of the phone in English, and Ryo laughed. "I don't know what any of that meant, but aren't you here in the building?"

They both heard Jin's voice behind them, and Ryo hung up the phone as Jin sauntered over to them, hands in the pockets of his ratty jeans and his perfect idol hair already squashed under a beanie. "You're a dick," Jin told Ryo with a grin.

"And you're a big vagina," Ryo replied, and Shige made a noise of discomfort at the language. "What you doing tonight?" 

"Out?" Jin asked, and Ryo nodded. Jin flipped his cell open again and walked off, while Ryo turned to Shige. "You should come."

"I don't think it's quite my scene," Shige answered, hedging the invitation.

"Don't be such a wimp," Ryo said, taunting him. "I'm sure you can handle it."

"No thanks," Shige said, and Ryo was about to argue with him when a hesitant voice called out Ryo's name behind them both. 

Walking quickly down the hallway towards them was Nakamaru. Shige didnt know Nakamaru that well; he knew him in the way that most of the major Johnny groups knew each other, but he didn't _know him_ know him. He had thought Ryo did, though, since they used to both hang out with Jin a lot.

Ryo stiffened in a strange way, and ignored Nakamaru until Nakamaru was standing right behind him. "Ryo, can we talk?"

"I don't have anything to say to you," Ryo said shortly, and Nakamaru swallowed and nodded. 

"Okay," he said, and there was something melancholy in his voice that made Shige hurt, just a little. Ryo heard it too, Shige could tell, because the hard line of his mouth wavered for the briefest of moments. "But if you ever do," Nakamaru continued, and Ryo's eyes closed like he was trying to block Nakamaru's voice out of his head. "If you ever do have something to say to me, or if you'll ever listen to what I have to say to you, then... You know how to get ahold of me."

Nakamaru waited for just a moment, maybe hoping Ryo would turn around and look at him, but then he exhaled, slowly and sadly. He smiled softly at Shige, a greeting and a goodbye, and cast one last look at Ryo's stiff back before retreating.

Jin wandered back over, with Yamapi in tow, clicking his phone shut as he approached. "We're on," Jin said, and grinned. "Is the suit coming with us?" Jin asked, cocking his thumb at Shige and making Shige want to bristle. He restrained the urge, opting instead to half-heartedly glare at Jin as Ryo chuckled hollowly.

Shige hated the empty look in Ryo's eyes. He'd never seen it before, but it seemed so painful. "I'd just make an idiot of myself," Shige said. "I'm not much of a partier."

A spark of humor entered Ryo's eyes. "That's true. But still, you should come." Ryo smiled softly at Shige, another new expression Shige filed away to examine later. "I'd like it if you came."

Shige squared his shoulders, and said "I'll come," before he could stop himself.

Four hours later, when he found himself in a booth at a popular Shibuya night club, as Ryo took his seventh shot of the evening and Yamapi had disappeared after he and Jin had squabbled over something silly like what color towels they were going to buy to replace the unraveling ones in their apartment, Shige wondered why he had agreed to this.

Jin and Ryo were bantering somewhat good-naturedly back and forth, both of them too drunk to pronounce half their words, and Uchi cradled a beer between his hands, drinking slowly and watching the two with amusement. Shige had ordered a soda, which had made Jin, Ryo, and Yamapi both tease him mercilessly, but Uchi had simply winked at him when the others hadn't been looking.

"Ryo is wastey-face," Jin taunted, and Ryo grunted.

"So are you, you light-weight. Didn't you learn how to hold your liquor in America?"

Jin cackled, and Uchi slugged Ryo in the shoulder, and Shige felt woefully out of place. He didn't belong here, with these close friends who had millions of inside jokes and a sort of easiness that comes with years of familiarity. 

But Ryo had asked him to come, and their newly blooming friendship was something Shige didn't want to watch shrivel up and disappear. Even if being there made him a little uncomfortable.

"I hope you're sterile," Ryo slurred drunkenly at Jin, and Shige would have laughed if he wasn't so worried about Ryo.

"I don't have to take your abuse," Jin said, but he didn't look angry, just amused. "Where's Pi?" 

"Dancing," Uchi said, pointing at the dance floor where Yamapi was dancing with a girl in mile-high stilettos. Jin frowned, the tiny expression pulling strangely at his mouth, got up, and walked toward Yamapi and the girl, and Shige watched as the crowd swallowed the three figures up. "I'm going to hit the restroom," Uchi said, smiling at Shige. "Can you take care of Shit-show Nishikido for me?"

Shige looked doubtfully down at Ryo, who laid with his head in Uchi's lap, looking two seconds away from needing a trashcan, and nodded. "I'll do my best," Shige said, and Uchi chuckled. 

"You always do," Uchi said.

Uchi lifted Ryo's head and slid out from under him, gesturing at Shige to slide in and take his seat. Shige hesitantly took Uchi's place as Ryo's pillow, and Ryo grunted when Uchi dropped his head, suddenly, onto Shige's lap. 

"Why is everything spinning?" Ryo said, and Shige smiled. 

"Probably because the human body wasn't really meant to digest alcohol. It's like a slow poison, didn't you know?"

"Don't lecture me. If I wanted to hear from an asshole, I'd fart," Ryo said, and Shige shot his coke right out of his nose. 

"Nishikido!"

"Whatever," Ryo slurred. "Just stop talking." Ryo rolled over on Shige's lap, so that his face was turned toward the sea of people on the dance floor rather than squinting up at Shige. "I really loved her," Ryo said, out of the blue, and Shige looked down at the side of Ryo's face.

"What? Who?" Shige didn't know what Ryo could be talking about.

"Satoko," Ryo replied, and Shige could barely make out the name.

"Who the heck is Satoko?" Shige wondered if another part of this conversation was happening in Ryo's head.

"The girl I loved," Ryo said, before turning his face back to Shige. "I loved her so much but stupid Nakamaru took her away."

Ryo closed his eyes then, and his eyebrows furrowed together. His face was caught in expression that Shige had never seen before, but it was vulnerable, and Shige felt nervous. "Nishikido, I'm not Uchi. It's Shige you're talking to."

"Of course you're not Uchi. Uchi wouldn't be caught dead with hair that resembles a lop-sided Christmas tree." Ryo grunted. "Uchi also wouldn't have devoted hours of his free time to helping me prepare for a variety show quiz without even knowing the reason for it."

Shige flushed and looked up at the ceiling, his head digging into the red leather cushion behind his neck. "Um."

"She wasn't my girlfriend or anything. It's not even really his fault, but I can't help but blame him for taking her away," Ryo said, and it took Shige a minute to realize he was talking about Satoko again. "I just wanted to win this time, even if it was just a stupid, petty, variety show game."

"Do you feel better now?" Shige asked curiously, looking down on Ryo once more. Ryo's eyes were looking right back, glazed over and unfocused.

"Not really," Ryo said. "But it's a start."

Shige hesitantly rested his hand on Ryo's arm, just a small gesture, but it made Ryo relax against him. "We all have to start somewhere."

"Take a shot with me," Ryo said, and Shige frowned. 

"You don't need any more shots."

"Then take one without me."

"Why?" Shige asked, and Ryo groaned and hoisted himself upright, using the table for leverage. 

"Because if I'm drunk and spilling my life secrets to you, you had better at least be tipsy."

***

It took Shige a minute to remember where he was when he woke up in the morning, in an unfamiliar apartment with the sun rising instead of setting in the big window. His back hurt, and when he opened his eyes, there was an amorphous blob that might be a human face peering down on him curiously.

"It lives!" A voice, Ryo's voice, Shige realized belatedly, said, and then Shige blinked, and his dry contacts finally got enough moisture from his tear ducts to settle back against his eyes without burning. 

"My eyes hurt," Shige croaked, and Ryo cackled. 

"That's called a hangover," Ryo said. "And this is called orange juice. Both are a vital part of mornings after a night on the town with Nishikido."

"I don't have a hangover," Shige said, sitting up and taking the orange juice from Ryo's hand anyway. "I just slept with my contacts in, which I shouldn't do."

"Wait, really?" Ryo asked. "I do that all the time."

"Are they the kind of contacts you can wear for a week?" Shige replied, after drinking a giant gulp of the juice. "This has pulp, doesn't it?"

"There are different kinds of contacts?" Ryo asked blankly, looking confused. "And yes, that orange juice has pulp, as god intended."

Shige made a disgusted face at him, and Ryo made a surprised bark of amusement. "You're going to go blind," Shige told him, setting the half-full juice glass on the table and trying not wince at the fact that there were no coasters. "And pulp is disgusting."

Ryo was still laughing. "You're fun in the morning."

"Glad to amuse you," Shige snarked, and Ryo's face slid into a more serious expression. Shige was amazed at how fast Ryo could change expressions, change the mood of the room. 

"Shige," Ryo said then, and Shige looked at him, waiting. "Thank you, again. I seem to be thanking you a lot lately."

"For what?" Shige said uncomfortably, examining Ryo's rug, worn and soft beneath his feet. 

"You know, when I first met you," Ryo said. "I thought you were straight-laced, boring, and had a terrible haircut." Shige snapped his head up with a frown, but Ryo was _smiling_ at him, and it made Shige's heart flip. "Now I know better, because only one of those three things is true."

"Which one?" Shige joked, and Ryo gave him a lopsided smile. 

"Be quiet and drink your pulp," Ryo said, and Shige drained his glass.

 

***

"Are you getting closer with Ryo-chan?" Tegoshi asked him, as Massu stuffed dumpling after dumpling into his face. Tegoshi would lean over every once in a while and nab one from Massu's plate, which led to a baleful glare from Massu until the waiter at the dim sum place they were at brought another heaping mound to the table.

"What do you mean?" Shige replied, stirring his soup carelessly with a wide ceramic spoon. "Nothing's changed."

Tegoshi scoffed, and Shige raised an eyebrow at him, which made Tegoshi smile sweetly and bat his eyelashes. "Liar," Tegoshi said, and Massu nodded in agreement, his cheeks bulging. "You might as well tell me what's up, because I want to know, and I always get what I want eventually."

"Massu's much cuter than you today," Shige told him, and stuffed four dumplings into his mouth at once.

***

Everyone else had gone home, and Shige was left alone in the empty studio with his camera and a handful of decent photos he'd taken on set today.

Shige had a giant album of photos he had taken since NewS' debut, sitting on his bedside table at home. He'd started it on a whim-- just a way to keep the memories, because Shige knew it couldn't last forever, being pop idol. Being a part of NewS was one of the pivotal experiences of his life, and when it was all over, he wanted to be able to look back and remember it all, all the times Koyama had made him smile, or Yamapi and Tegoshi had joked with each other about food, or Massu had slung a beefy arm around his shoulder in camaraderie, or Ryo had playfully teased him, rewarding him with a smile when he refused to crack. He wanted to keep all of those perfect things close to his heart, and his photography had just seemed the perfect answer.

Today he'd taken some really funny shots of Koyama with pencils up his nose-- not pictures like the New York photos, that Koyama had actually snatched as official shots, but fun ones, ones he'd definitely add to his album.

"You really like taking photos, huh?" Ryo said, and Shige jumped, startled, and almost dropped his camera. 

"Yeah, I do," Shige replied, readjusting his grip around the SLR, the strap looped twice around his wrist.

"What do you take pictures of?" Ryo leaned against the door frame, just watching him, arms crossed against his chest. 

"Flowers, buildings, people," Shige started, then he cleared his throat. "Just, you know, the world."

"I don't really get why you take so many pictures though," Ryo said, not moving from his watchful place in the entrance to the dressing room.

"Because photographs are timeless. They capture an image, a _moment_ , and freeze it in time, forever preserving that image just the way it looked at the exact second you snapped the picture." Shige sucked his lower lip into his mouth, fiddling with the lens, adjusting the focus and exposure. "Some moments just scream out for capture-- when I see something incredibly ugly, or something incredibly beautiful, I want to make that scene last for eternity. I want that moment, that awe-inspiring moment, to exist forever."

When Shige finished speaking, he looked up at Ryo again. "Wow," Ryo said, looking at him queerly. "That's...kind of an awesome answer."

"When I was a kid," Shige told him, "I wanted to be a photographer." Shige cracked his neck. "Never really saw myself in front of the camera."

"Why did you do this, then? Why aren't you taking pictures of penguins in Alaska, or something?"

"Because there aren't any penguins in Alaska," Shige said, and Ryo huffed. 

"Answer the question, smart-ass."

"Because..." Shige contemplated his answer. "Because to me, being behind the camera is capturing moments, from your own perspective. But I wanted..." Shige ran his hands along the sleek body of his camera, enjoying the weight of it in his hands. "I wanted to be a part of some moments, too."

Ryo was staring at him, with some unreadable look in his eyes that Shige couldn't decipher. His eyes were so dark they looked black. The fluorescent light from the dressing room cast Ryo in shadow, because the hallway had gone dark in the early evening. His jaw looked sharp and dangerous, and Shige lifted the camera without a second thought and took a picture.

"Something incredibly ugly, huh?" Ryo said nervously, the look disappearing from his eyes, and leaving Shige wondering if he completely imagined it. 

It was then that Shige noticed the disheveled hair, and the dark circles under Ryo's eyes. He looked tired, but something about Ryo, some essential light that Shige'd always seen, always know existed, shone through anyway. Shige kind of wanted to take another photo, but now Ryo was on his guard. 

"Something awe-inspiring," Shige replied, and when Ryo's mouth gaped slightly in surprise, Shige clicked the button, and his world shook with the whir of the shutter.

Later, when Shige was examining the film in the darkroom, which honestly was just his laundry room that he converted once a week into an off-limits development zone, the two pictures of Ryo ended up being his favorites.

 

***

 

When Shige's mom called to tell him Taro, his best friend from childhood, had passed away in a car accident, Shige couldn't quite process it.

The rest of the day passed in a blur, and Shige didn't manage to fall asleep, spending the night with his eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling and remembering Taro's gentle smile.

His mom called again in the morning, and Shige could barely keep his eyes open as the spoke. 

"Shigeaki, the funeral is on Saturday. I'll make up your room, okay?"

"Okay," Shige croaked.

"Are you gonna be alright, honey?"

"Yes," Shige told her, even though he wasn't sure yet, because he didn't want her to worry. "I have rehearsal now, so I've got to go."

"Okay, try not to dwell on it, dear. Call me when you know when you're coming home, and I'll have your father pick you up from the station."

"Okay," Shige said, and he hung up the phone. He drove to work in a daze, steering on autopilot and waking up as he slid out of the car.

Shige has always been really good about holding things together, keeping himself poised and focused even when everything around him was going crazy, but he just couldn't seem to think about anything but Taro. He kept screwing up the choreography or dancing out of step, singing out of tune or forgetting to sing at all. He could tell the others were worried. Even Ryo looked worried, an unfamiliar expression on his face, his dark eyes searching and his wide, sarcastic mouth pressed silent, and as he's walking past Shige later he pressed a warm hand to Shige's shoulder in place of the acerbic words that usually spewed forth when anyone messed up as frequently and completely as Shige had during rehearsal today.

"Is everything okay?" he asked, and for some reason it was unexpected. Shige started and turned to look at Ryo, wondering why he was bothering. That kind of thing was more Koyama's role in NewS, and Koyama's role in his life.

"Well," Shige said, eyes dropping down to the floor to stare at the patterns on the tile. "My friend died yesterday."

"Your friend?" Ryo queried. "Who?"

"A childhood friend," Shige replied. "Someone I knew when I was younger. Someone I really valued."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Ryo said. "Well, when is the funeral?" Ryo asked, and Shige sighed.

"This weekend."

"So at least you get to go home and visit your friends and family. That'll be nice won't it? See your hometown."

"Yeah, it'll be great," Shige said, and maybe Ryo could sense the insincerity in his voice because Ryo's hand, still warm on his shoulder, squeezed. 

"What's wrong? Ryo demanded. 

"I don't want to go back there," Shige answered, his hand tangling in the hair at the nape of his own neck. "I don't want to go there at all. Taro was... The only thing worth going back there for, besides my parents."

"What about your other friends?" Ryo questioned, and Shige looked up from the tile. 

"Other friends?" Shige said, lips pulling with bitterness. "I didn't have many of those. Any of those."

Ryo swallowed, and his hand slipped down from Shige's shoulder. "You have friends now," Ryo said, and Shige feels his eyebrows crawling up his face. "I mean, Koyama likes you best, for god knows what reason. And Massu likes you. Kusano, too. Hell, even Jin likes you, and you basically just judge him all the time with that look on your face like his existence offends you deep inside."

"It does," Shige said, a smile toying with the edges of his lips. "But he's a good guy."

"So it doesn't matter if you didn't have tons of friends before you were twelve, or whatever. You're still pretty cool now." Ryo glared at him. "And if you tell anyone I said that you were cool, I will deny, deny, deny."

"Thanks, Nishikido," Shige said. "But I still don't think I can go to the funeral."

"Don't be ridiculous," Ryo told him. "This Taro was your only childhood friend and you aren't going to go to his funeral? That's lame, Kato." Ryo crossed his arms in front of his chest. "You have to go."

"You don't know what it was like for me--" Shige started to say, but then he stopped, because he knew he shouldn't be putting his problems on others, on _Ryo_ of all people. "I just don't think I can face it alone." He felt tears in the very corners of his eyes, and he bit the flesh inside his cheek to hold them back. He felt pathetic.

"I'll go with you," Ryo said, and when Shige turned to look at him with shock, Ryo looked just as surprised with his own words. But then he smiled crookedly at Shige, and Shige felt his stomach do a tiny flip. "I'm from Osaka, too, you know. I'll go visit my family. You can meet them, if you want."

"I couldn't possibly ask you to--"

"You didn't ask," Ryo told him, looking irritated, either by Shige or by his own kindness. "I offered, for some reason even I don't understand. So shut up and say 'thank you'."

"Thank you," Shige blurted out, and Ryo looked at him and smiled.

"That's what friends are for."

 

***

Koyama was looking at him, confused, and Shige shifted in his chair, trying to figure out how to respond.

"Well, he offered," Shige said, and Koyama tilted his head to the side. 

"I get that. What I don't get is _why_ he offered," Koyama replied, and then he smiled. "Ryo-chan is discovering his heart~"

Shige laughed. "Maybe. Maybe he still feels like he owes me from the whole trivia show thing. I don't know. It feels like we're...closer, lately." Shige remembered Ryo's face, eyes half-lidded from alcohol and sadness, as he talked about Satoko in a low, serious voice, his head on Shige's lap. "I feel like maybe we are finally stating to understand each other."

"Don't replace me, Shige," Koyama said, with a pout. "I would have gone with you."

"Really?" Shige said, looking into Koyama's earnest gaze. 

"Well, of course I would have. You're my best friend. You've got lots of friends, Shige, and we all _want_ to be there for you."

Koyama's expression was earnest, and Shige could feel himself getting choked up. "Thanks," he said, and Koyama put a hand on top of Shige's.

"Your welcome," he said. "I can't believe you're going to take Ryo to your house."

"Me either," Shige said.

Nyanta crawled up on Shige's lap, then, and Shige couldn't help but notice the cat was wearing a little blue sweater, with pink buttons and a Peter Pan collar. "Is that...?"

Koyama beamed at him, his eyes sparkling. Nyanta preened, the perfectly shaped sweater pulling across the chest, the pink buttons shining in the lamp-light. "It came out pretty well, don't you think?"

Shige looked consideringly at the sweater, remembering the weird lump of knitted yarn in Koyama's lap. It had somehow taken shape, a much different shape than Shige had ever dreamed it could take. "It did," Shige told him.

"It just takes a little perseverance to transform things, sometimes," Koyama said, and Shige suddenly felt like the world seemed full of a lot more possibilities.

 

***

 

The train ride down to Osaka was a quiet one. Shige read a book about the progression of women's rights in Japan, while Ryo slept with his mouth open, falling onto Shige's shoulder about a quarter of the way into the ride. Shige reached over and gently closed his mouth a few times, but it always fell open a few moments later so Shige gave up after the third or fourth time.

Shige's dad met them at the train station, looking flustered to meet Ryo. "You must be Nishikido," Shige's dad said. "It's nice to meet you. We don't get to meet many of Shige's friends, since he moved to Tokyo."

Ryo looked at him with a smile. "You've never seen me in photos with Shige or anything?"

"Oh we don't pay much attention to his idol stuff," Shige's dad said. "There's too many of you. The ones Shige really likes are the ones he let's see his house, haha."

"Oh, is that so?" Ryo said, and Shige tried not to blush when Ryo turned questioning eyes on him.

"Well Shige didn't have it very easy--"

"Dad," Shige said stiffly, and Shige's dad quieted, adjusting his hands on the steering wheel. 

"Right, well, you'll sleep in the guest room tonight, Nishikido, and the funeral is tomorrow at nine in the morning."

"Sounds great," Ryo said, and Shige ignored Ryo's heavy gaze, opting instead to stare out of the window.

When Ryo appeared at Shige's doorway the next morning, dressed in a black suit, with a black vest and a black tie in his hand, hair combed back, Shige was only partially ready. He had on his dress slacks and a dark gray shirt, and quickly finished with his tie. 

"Help me," Ryo said. "I'm used to having someone else do this for me, you know?" 

Shige agreed with a laugh, and Ryo handed him the black tie. Shige swifly looped the tie around Ryo's neck and expertly knotted it into a double windsor, straightening the tie and stepping back.

Ryo smelled nice, Shige noticed, as he stepped away and reached for his own jacket.

"Thanks," Ryo said, before he cleared his throat. "You ready?" 

"As I'll ever be," Shige replied. Ryo nudged him with his shoulder, and Shige smiled down at him, "Thank you. For coming."

"Yeah, well..." Ryo said, blushing and looking discomfited. "You're welcome, I guess."

When they arrived at the temple, Shige had trouble letting go of the steering wheel, after he had parked the car. "Come on," Ryo said. "You can do this. You've been shirtless next to Japan's heartthrob, Yamashita Tomohisa, putting yourself in _direct competition_ with his abs. That takes bravery, Kato Shigeaki. So move it."

Shige laughed, and released his death grip on the steering wheel. "Yeah," Shige said. "Let's go in."

Ryo paused next to the photo of Taro at the entrance to the temple, his eyes assessing Taro's appearance. "This him?"

"Yeah," Shige said, swallowing. "That's him. Was him."

"Big guy," Ryo said offhandedly. "How tall was he, like 190 centimeters?"

"Yeah," Shige said. "About." Shige turned away from the picture. "He used to...protect me," Shige said, and Ryo turned to look at him sharply. 

"From what?" Shige said, and there was something piercing in his voice.

"Oh you know, just kid stuff," Shige said, before he walked toward Taro's parents. Ryo hung back as he greeted them with deep bows, and then they both gave him big hugs.

The brief service, lead by two Buddhist monks, was simple and beautiful, and somehow, Ryo's strong and quiet presence at his side kept him from falling apart.

Taro had been...Before Johnny's had introduced him to other kids who were just as _different_ as he was, Taro had been, well, his only friend.

After they've walked down the steps, Shige stopped and turned around to face Ryo. Ryo had one foot on the stony ground, and the other, behind, still on the last step. "What?"

"I couldn't...have done this without you." Shige said, and then with both hands, he rubbed frantically at his head, destroying his hair. "I mean, every tome I wanted to run away or cry I imagined you making fun of me or telling the story on stage in front of thousands of people and I stuck it out."

"...Is that...a good thing?"

"Yeah," Shige said. "Because it made me push myself, made me be stronger."

"Wow," Ryo said. "I'm really awesome."

Shige laughed, and Ryo peered at him closely. "Your hair is horrific right now, by the way. It looks like it got into a fight with a grizzly bear and lost."

"Well, well, if it isn't Kato Shigeaki," said a voice behind Ryo, and Shige felt his heart sink. "All grown up and in a gay boy band."

There were four of them, and Shige remembered each of their faces clearly.

"Do you want us to sign your CDs?" Ryo said sweetly, too sweetly, and Shige could see his fists clenched. "You look like the type that has all of them hidden under his bed in a box so his friends can't see."

"Wow, Kato, Taro isn't here anymore so you found a midget to protect you?"

"You also look like the type that doesn't want to keep his teeth," Ryo said, his own teeth clenched.

"Go away," Shige said weakly, while he pulled on Ryo's jacket and guided toward the car. "God, it's a funeral and we're twenty-five years old."

"And you're still running away from everything except textbooks," the tall thin man in the center said, and then Shige shoved a snarling Ryo into the passenger seat before quickly sliding into the driver's seat.

"Sorry," Shige said, and Ryo was quiet, his face set in an expression of displeasure.

"You were bullied," Ryo said, finally, and Shige wondered if he should pull over the car. 

"Well, I wouldn't go that far--"

"You were _bullied_." Ryo said again, and then he swore. "and then you get to Johnny's, and everything is great, and then we bully you, too."

Shige pulled over the car, pulling it onto the shoulder of the road and putting it in park. "There's a difference between you guys teasing me, and those guys, alright?"

Ryo jumped out of the car, and Shige scrambled to follow him. Ryo flopped to the ground in the middle of the grass, weeds sticking up through his hair and between his fingers. His right hand came up to shield his eyes from the climbing sun, and he glared at Shige, who was still standing.

"How can you let them talk to you like that?" Ryo snapped. "Don't you have any self-respect?"

"It's over now, alright? I don't live here anymore."

"It doesn't matter! Those guys are assholes, and you just--"

"Stop! I know, okay? I know. It's not that easy."

"You deserve more than that. Those sad excuses of human life don't have the right to talk to you or anyone else like that. Grow some balls."

"They're not bad people, they just..."

"You can't let people walk all over you or anyone else. And you can rationalize that they're good people deep inside, or whatever bullshit you tell yourself, but in the end, even 'good people' make mistakes." 

"No one's perfect."

"Right. So stick up for yourself. For what you believe. And for goodness sakes, Shige, you are too smart and too successful to be pushed around by the likes of those guys. They couldn't even come up with quality insults."

"I feel like I keep saying thanks, and it keeps being not enough."

"Thanks for what? Lecturing you in a field by the side of the road and picking fights with your childhood bullies?"

"Well, yeah." Shige said. "Somehow, those things are just what I needed."

"I tend to bring out the best in people," Ryo informed him, and Shige laughed and offered him a hand, pulling Ryo up when Ryo took it.

"You're a good guy, Kato Shigeaki. I don't waste my time on mediocre people; I'm too good for that, really," Ryo said. "And don't you forget it."

"Nishikido..."

"My name's Ryo, to my friends."

And then Ryo smiled, and a hundred tiny butterflies exploded in Shige's stomach.

 

***

Ryo's oldest brother, when he met Shige for the first time, took one look at him and laughed. "You look like you should be catching rings with your two dimensional flying fox sidekick."

"What?"

"Come on, Sonic, let's go introduce you to the family." Shige stared after him bewilderedly, and Ryo chuckled, grabbing his arm.

"Don't worry," Ryo said. "You should be used to the Nishikido sense of humor."

"It's going to be a long day, isn't it?"

"I have a lot of brothers," Ryo said in response.

When they left for the train station, Ryo's brother stopped him at the door while Ryo bid his mother farewell. "It was nice to meet you, finally," he said. "Ryo seems really fond of you."

"Really?" Shige said dubiously, scratching his neck. "We just started getting to know each other for real. We've been group members forever, but there's always been..."

"Ryo's hard to get to know. But worth it, we think."

"I think so too," Shige said, and when Ryo dragged him out to the taxi, bitching about how everyone in his family was too lazy to take him to the train station, Shige couldn't help but grin.

***

When Ryo invited him over for beers and 'general chilling out', Shige's first impulse had been to say no. It'd probably be weird, he thought, and he'd feel totally left out. But then Ryo had turned and invited Koyama too, and suddenly the prospect of hanging out at Ryo's apartment for the first time since, well, ever, didn't seem nearly as daunting.

When Shige knocked on the door, Kamenashi Kazuya of all people answered the door. "Yo," Kamenashi said, and ushered Shige in. "Welcome to the crazy assortment of people Ryo calls his 'chill friend's."

"What does that even mean?"

"You know, the people he can hang out with not-drunk."

"Ah," Shige said, and then he spotted Koyama, lying comfortably on the floor, hand supporting his head as he watched TV, and Ryo saw him, smiled, and patted the space next to him on the couch. Shige sat down, and Ryo handed him a beer.

The beer tasted awful on Shige's lips, but the atmosphere at Ryo's place was really good tonight, so it was a sacrifice he was willing to make. Yamapi sat on the arm of the sofa, texting Jin and occasionally making blank faces at the wall as Kamenashi joined Koyama on the floor and they watched a Discovery Channel documentary about the wonderful world of cute fluffy kittens, or something equally silly, and made cooing noises at the screen. Ryo, Shige could tell, was interested in the documentary as well, but he was fighting to keep a stoic, disinterested face whenever Koyama turned around.

"Ryo-chan, look at this KITTEN," Koyama said, and Ryo's eyes widened with delight before he glanced around the room and stifled his glee. "Isn't it cute?"

"Your mom is cuter," Ryo responded grumpily. "And at least I can have sex with her."

Shige snorted with disgust, and Koyama made a tiny frown of displeasure at him, that looked more miffed than offended. Kamenashi couldn't be bothered to turn away from the screen, mesmerized by the tiny paws and fluffy faces in front of him. 

"Ryo-chan is such an Ebenezer Scrooge," Kamenashi mutters, carefully not loud enough to mask the sound of mewling kittens. 

Shige watched Ryo's face, and at seeing the struggle on it, he couldn't stop himself from laughing. He leaned over toward Ryo and nudged Ryo's shoulder with his own, bumping them together. "Hey," he said. "Hey."

"Hey, what?" Ryo grouched, his lips falling into a pout. 

"It's okay, you know." Shige leaned his head on Ryo's shoulder, and looked up at him from his new perspective. "These are your friends."

Ryo glared down at him, leaning his head on the sofa back so he could look sideways into Shige's eyes. "So?" Ryo asked, his voice defensive.

"So you don't have to pretend," Shige said, before awkwardly swallowing. "You can like the cute little kittens, and none of us are going to think any less of you."

"Why is talking to you like talking to my grandfather?" Ryo grumbled, and then met Shige's eyes.

Ryo flushed at whatever he saw there, and turned his eyes away from Shige as Yamapi chuckled. "I'll think less of you," Yamapi said, and then he chuckled some more. "Real men like cute little puppies."

Ryo growled and threw a pillow over at Yamapi, making him drop his phone. Yamapi swore, and leaped at Ryo, and Shige scrambled back to avoid their tussle. 

"Don't be ridiculous," Ryo panted from atop Yamapi, where his smaller frame had pinned the man down to the floor. "Cats are noble, proud, solitary creatures."

"Dogs are strong, and MAN'S best friend," Yamapi crowed when he finally managed the leverage to switch their positions. "And cats are totally chick pets. Real GIRLS have cats."

Koyama sat up, put his hands on his cheeks, and sighed, as Shige suppressed the giggle that wanted to burst from his throat. Ryo looked ridiculous, his long black hair tousled and flipped up strangely from Yamapi's curled fist rubbing it threateningly, and Yamapi himself was a mess from wrestling with Ryo, who was stronger than he looked. "Boys, stop fighting," Koyama said, sounding like someone's mother, as usual. Well, not Shige's mother, but still, somebody's. "I have a cat."

"Gay," Yamapi said.

"I'll have you know I like both cats and dogs," Kamenashi informed them, still lying peacefully on his stomach in front of the tv, making obnoxious baby noises whenever a new kitten appeared. 

"That just makes you a real _hermaphrodite_ ," Ryo snapped, and Kamenashi turned around with a raised eyebrow. 

"You want me to fight you?" Kamenashi said, his voice low and a little dangerous. "Cause you won't like that."

Yamapi glanced at Kamenashi's painted nails and sparkly t-shirt, which read 'Diva' across the front in stylized cursive English letters and glitter, and rolled his eyes. "Oh, I'm so scared," he screeched, in falsetto, and Ryo laughed. They high fived, and Kamenashi smiled a grim little smile that even Shige, the newcomer to this kind of apartment hang-out, could see was dangerous. 

"Oh dear," Koyama said, and Shige reached again for his beer and pulled his legs off the floor where the three of them, Yamapi, Ryo, and Kamenashi, sat. "This won't go well." Koyama sat down next to Shige on the sofa, leaning against him and twiddling his thumbs against each other nervously.

Yamapi and Ryo didn't look worried.

Kamenashi, it turned out, was stronger than both of them combined. 

"Oh shut up," Ryo said, when Shige and Koyama had collapsed against each other, laughing. 

"Nothing to worry about, eh?" Shige said, as Kamenashi winked at him. 

"Put your fist in your mouth," Ryo said. "I admire any talent that makes you shut the fuck up."

Ryo's put out expression just made them laugh harder.

 

***

 

"We should write together," Ryo said. 

"Write what?" Shige replied blankly.

"A song, dumbass," Ryo said, with a huff. "Obviously."

"You want to write with me?" Shige felt a little like a kid being picked first for soccer, and despite being a pop idol, his face on hundreds of thousands of walls around Japan, it wasn't a feeling he was used to.

"I thought you were supposed to be the smart one in the group," Ryo snapped. 

"Ryo-chan, play nice," Yamapi said, and Tegoshi nodded. 

"Ryo-chan's never wanted to work with Shige before," Tegoshi said. "So Shige is probably surprised and pleased~" 

"Shut up," Shige said, and to his surprise, Ryo said it at the same time. 

"We were just sort of friends before," Ryo said, looking past Shige at something in the distance. "But now we're..."

"So close!" Tegoshi squealed with joy, and Koyama had his thumbs through his belt loops, rocking back and forth with amusement.

"Why, oh why, do people think you are cute and innocent?" Shige asked Tegoshi, as Massu slung his arm around Shige's shoulder. 

"He's definitely cute," Massu said, and Tegoshi jumped on Yamapi's back. 

Yamapi grinned over his shoulder at Tegoshi. "Oishii!" Tegoshi giggled, and Yamapi looked smitten with it as usual. "And one out of two isn't bad," Yamapi finished, and Shige sighed. 

"Well?" Ryo said to Shige impatiently, and Koyama sidled up to Shige's right, brushing the back of his hand against the back of Shige's hand, in a silent gesture of support. 

"He'd love to," Koyama said, and Shige grinned. 

"I would," Shige admitted, and a tiny smile hovered around Ryo's mouth while Tegoshi cheered from his position on Yamapi's back.

***

The chord progression Ryo had come up with was kind of difficult, and Shige, who was a pretty good guitar player, fumbled over it twice before Ryo sighed and put down his guitar. 

He came over and stood behind Shige, leaning against his back and wrapping arms around Shige in order to hold the guitar. His hands gently moved Shige's fingers slowly, showing him how to move from one string to another easily for that particular switch. "Like this," he said, and Shige felt every inch of where Ryo's body touched his. "Sorry, it's hard for me to do it left handed so I had to get behind you."

It wasn't the first time they'd hugged; they had done it for the cameras more times than Shige would ever be able to count. But it was different, like this-- they were alone in Ryo's apartment, and no one was watching them, and no girls were screaming, and there was no reason for them to be touching at all. But they were, and Ryo's chest felt warm and strong against his back, and Shige could barely concentrate on the way Ryo moved his fingers across the guitar strings. Ryo's hair brushed against Shige's cheek and neck, and it smelled like jasmine soap and tobacco and maybe a little like cedar, but that might have just been Ryo's natural smell.

"I've got it now," Shige whispered. Ryo pulled away, and on the next try, Shige executed the chord progression perfectly, bringing a smile to Ryo's face.

Shige's skin burned still, minutes after Ryo's touch disappeared.

 

***

"How goes the song-writing?" Jin said, chewing with his mouth open. Yamapi smacked the back of his head.

"Close your mouth Bakanishi," Yamapi told him, and Jin smiled at him. Jin's smile was lovely, Shige thought, wide and bright and natural.

Shige's own smile was still a little awkward, despite years of practice. 

"It's going really well," Ryo said, slurping ramen into his mouth. "It's one of the best things I've ever helped write."

Jin raised an eyebrow. "Better than 'Hey Girl'?" Jin asked, and Shige laughed.

"Oh no, nothing so _sophisticated_ as that," Shige said, and Ryo and Jin punched him on opposite arms, perfectly synchronized chastising. 

"You had that coming," Yamapi said, and Shige attempted his own grin. 

"Don't get cocky, kid," Ryo told him smugly, and a tiny ramen noodle was stuck to his chin, distracting Shige from whatever response he'd been planning on making.

His hand itches to wipe the noodle off Ryo's face, and finally he couldn't help it. He reached up with his left hand and used his thumb to wipe across Ryo's lower lip, snagging the noodle. Ryo's eyes cross as he looks down at Shoge's thumb, and the expression on his face makes Jin laugh, and his laugh is just as warm as his smile.

But as warm as Jin's laugh is, Ryo's small grin of thanks makes Shige feel even warmer, and his thumb tingled where their skin had touched.

"I think it'll be a really good collaboration," Shige said, after swallowing thickly. 

"I'm looking forward to it," Yamapi said, before he slapped Jin on the back of the head again. "Jin, I told you to close your mouth when you chew."

 

***

"Is it fun, writing with Ryo-chan?" Koyama asked, and Shige nodded.

"It is, but he's strict about lyrics."

"He does take song-writing very seriously."

Shige crossed his arms on the kitchen table, and laid his chin on his right arm. "He says there's no depth to my love lyrics."

"Is he right?"

"He might be. I've never been in love. I have no idea what it would feel like ,or how I would even know it when I felt it."

Koyama leaned forward, his hands gripping the edge of the table. "You'll definitely know it when you feel it, Shige."

"Yeah?" Shige said, licking his lips.

"Definitely," Koyama replied, his eyes narrowing playfully at Shige. "You'll _definitely_ know."

***

 

"Hey, now that we're real friends instead of work friends, or whatever the difference is, can I ask you a personal question?"

"Um, yes?" Shige replied, and Ryo leaned sideways across the table, looking intently into Shige's eyes.

"What is this Wagahai shit?"

"Eh?" Shige asked, confused.

"Your blog is written from the perspective...of an imaginary cat. A cat that is kinda gay for Koyama's very real cat, and they have adventures while you and Koyama hold hands and skip across rainbows?"

"Well, I'm allergic to cats," Shige explained. "So I can't have a _real_ cat named Wagahai. It had to be imaginary."

Ryo blinked, slowly. "Oh great, thanks, that cleared everything up." He slapped the table. "Shige, what the fuck?"

Shige chuckled. "Are you familiar with the 1905 work by Souseki Natsume? 'Wagahai wa neko de aru'?"

"No," Ryo said flatly, as if it should be obvious that Ryo had better things to do than read weird novels from post-restoration Japan. Shige supposes it should be.

"It's a novel written from the perspective of a cat, that offers criticism about the negative changes in Japan under the new Meiji government, and the impacts of Western influence."

"Okay."

"My blog is written in that structure so as to offer an outside perspective to our fans of the absurdity of our lives."

"So it's not insane because it's ~literary~. That's what you're telling me."

"Yes?" Shige replied, unsure if he should confirm Ryo's assessment.

"Your nerdiness knows no boundaries," Ryo said, standing up and patting Shige on the shoulder. "You probably like Star Trek, too."

"I do not," Shige protested.

"Yeah you do, I can see the love of Darth Vader in your nerdy, blind little eyes," Ryo retorted, his hand sliding down Shige's arm as he stepped away. "Don't deny it."

"Darth Vader is Star _Wars_ ," Shige said, and then he blushed.

"Point made," Ryo said. "I've got a Kanjani meeting in ten minutes, so we'll continue this later, I guess. See ya, Shige."

"Aren't you going out with Akanishi?"

"Naw, I'd rather hang out with you today."

Shige watched him leave, and wondered why he felt so warm.

***

 

When Shige's phone vibrated on his dresser in the middle of the night, he tried to ignore it. But it just kept buzzing and buzzing, and when he finally rolled over and narrowed bleary eyes at the flashing caller ID screen, he quickly answered.

"Ryo? It's three in the morning," Shige groaned. "Where's the fire?"

"Yamapi is gay," Ryo said quickly. "With Jin."

"You say that once a day, Ryo. I'm going back to sleep." Shige closed his eyes, flopping onto his back and keeping the phone pressed up against his ear anyway, because something seemed weird about Ryo's voice. 

"No, Shige, I mean _actually_ gay." The distress in Ryo's voice was sharp in the tiny speaker of Shige's phone, and Shige opened his eyes again.

"What are you talking about? Are you drunk?" Shige asked, his fingers tightening on the phone. 

"I left my keys at Pi's apartment. I didn't realize until I had gotten down to the car. So I went back upstairs, and knocked. No one answered so I tried the door. It was open. They were both...Yamapi had Jin pushed against the wall...I saw..." Ryo's voice cracked, and Shige swallowed convulsively as he tried to process what Ryo told him.

Ryo was hyperventilating on the other end of the line, and Shige felt a little lost. "Where are you?"

"Outside your apartment," Ryo said, and Shige climbed out of bed, putting on his slippers and shuffling to the door. 

"I'm buzzing you in," Shige told him, and hung up the phone. 

Ryo looked frazzled and distraught when he walked into Shige's kitchen, as Shige was pulling tea mugs down from the cabinet and putting them on the table, where the honey already sat waiting. "Shige, oh my god."

"Who else have you told?" Shige asked him quietly, as he poured hot water from the kettle into the mugs.

"Nobody, are you crazy? I can't tell people this!"

Shige sighed and brought the mugs over to the table. "Did they see you?"

"Yeah. Yamapi tried to stop me, and Jin just looked scared," Ryo said to the table. His face was buried in his arms. "I'm so confused."

"What's the big deal?" Shige asked. "I mean, it's unexpected but...what's the big deal?"

"They're both GUYS, Shige," Ryo replied, and Shige sat down across from him, and cradled his mug between his hands. He looked at Ryo, who was now looking back at him with wild eyes. "They're both guys. Don't you think that's weird? Don't you think that's wrong?"

"No," Shige said honestly, setting his mug on the table softly. "Not really."

Ryo set his lips in a thin line. "What do you mean?"

"It's just Pi. And Akanishi, who I have never been close to, but he's sweet, and you've always seemed to like him. So what's it matter if they like to make out when you're not there?"

"I don't know," Ryo said, mouth tightening even further. "But it does."

The atmosphere the next morning at rehearsal was tense. Shige tried not to pay attention to the way Yamapi kept trying to catch Ryo's gaze, or the way Ryo studiously avoided looking in Yamapi's general direction.

"What's going on between Leader and Ryo-chan?" Koyama whispered to Shige when Ryo went to the restroom. 

"I don't know," Shige lied, and then bit his lip when Yamapi squared his shoulders and marched out of the rehearsal room, in the direction of the restroom.

Shige gave it three minutes before he went out after him. The hallway was quiet, too quiet, and Shige walked a little faster, until he turned the corner and saw them standing there, by the washroom.

Yamapi is hunched over, his arms wrapped around himself as Ryo quietly stares at him. "Ryo-chan, _please_." Shige had never seen Yamapi look so defeated. "Please."

"Please what?" Ryo asked, and his voice was quiet but bordering on hysterical. "Please don't tell? Please pretend you don't know? Please WHAT?"

"Please let me explain it to you," Yamapi said, and Ryo scoffed.

"What's there to explain? You and Jin fuck when I'm not around."

Yamapi winces. "It's not like that."

"Not like what? You DON'T secretly sleep together, despite the fact that you're both guys and it could _devastate_ your careers? Are you that desperate for sex? It's-"

"We're in _love,_ Ryo-chan!" Yamapi yelled, before flushing, and it echoed hauntingly through the hallway. Ryo looked like a goldfish, mouth slack and eyes bulging.

"I need to think about that," Ryo said finally, and he spun on his heel. "Tell everyone I felt sick and went home early." 

"Okay," Yamapi replied softly, his nails digging into his own skin as he tightly clutched his own arms. "Will you...call me?"

"Maybe," Ryo answered, and then he walked down the hall and called the elevator. He looked back up, toward Yamapi, and Shige could see the conflict and distress in his eyes. "But don't call me."

Ryo stepped into the elevator without meeting Yamapi's gaze, or seeing Shige. Yamapi collapsed against the wall and covered his face with his hands, and Shige couldn't just stand there and let him suffer alone.

"Leader," Shige said. "Yamapi." Yamapi looked up, and he smiled wryly at Shige.

"I suppose you heard."

"Well yeah. Also Ryo told me last night, and I kept him at my place so he wouldn't be unsupervised."

"Oh," Yamapi said. "I guess he couldn't go to me or Jin about it, ha-ha."

"No, I guess not," Shige replied, and then Yamapi looked up at the ceiling and blinked rapidly, as if he was fighting back tears. "It's going to be okay, Leader."

"Will it?" Yamapi asked, sliding down to the floor, his back against the wall of the hallway. "Shige, I didn't choose to fall in love with another man, with Jin."

Shige dropped down next to him, and the wall was cold behind his back. "I figured," Shige replied, without judgement. 

"It's like... I look at Jin," Yamapi said, and he licked his lips while he sought the right words. "When I look at Jin, I don't see another guy. I just see _Jin,_ who he is, what I like about him and what I love about him. And it doesn't matter, to me, that he's not a girl, you know?"

Shige didn't know what to say, not really, but the look on Yamapi's face made his heart hurt, with sympathy. "Leader..."

And Shige could understand, maybe, seeing a person and not the package.

"What if I lose Ryo-chan? What if other people find out? What if we both lose everything?" Yamapi sighed and anxiously pushed his hand through his hair. "I think about it all the time, the consequences of loving Jin like this, but I can't...not love him."

They sat in silence for a while, and Shige felt lost. 

"Thanks for listening, and not thinking less of me," Yamapi said. 

"Yamapi, you can't change your own heart, and you shouldn't have to to make other people happy," Shige said to him in reply, and Yamapi's smile spread across his face, like the sun. 

"Thank you, Shige," Yamapi told him, and stood up. "Ready to go back to practice?"

Suddenly Shige knew what he had to do. _You have to stand up for what you believe in, even when it's hard._

"No, I've got something I have to take care of."

It only figured that he'd find Ryo right outside the building, in the park across the street, lying length-wise across a bench and staring at the sky. It almost seemed like he wanted Shige to find him.

Shige stopped next to the bench, blocking the sun from hitting Ryo's face and making Ryo open his eyes. "Shige?"

"I had... _have_ a lot of respect for you Ryo. I think you're a kind person, and a good friend, and you've been there for me, when I really needed it. But now I find myself in the unique position of losing that respect."

"What?" Ryo's hands curled up in the fabric of his t-shirt, and his eyes pierced into Shige's own. They were challenging, and they made Shige want to curl up and retreat back into silence. But Shige knew now wasn't the time to back down, because Yamapi needed him to do this. Hell, Ryo needed him to do this. Shige steeled his resolve.

"Ryo, what did you love about Satoko?" Shige asked calmly. He didn't break the gaze between them, holding Ryo's eyes with his own.

"About Satoko?"Ryo looked confused about where Shige was going with this thread of conversation. 

"Yes, the woman you are in love with. Tell me what about her you liked."

Ryo finally pulled his eyes away from Shige, resting his head on the arm of the bench and glaring up into the cloudless sky. "Her laugh. The way she always had something nice to say about everyone, even when I was being mean. The way she used to twist her hair around her finger when she was thinking about something complicated. And the way she would pick up a gross bug in a second but she was scared of birds." Ryo's hands fisted even tighter in his shirt, and Shige wondered if Ryo's nails were digging into his palms. "I don't know, everything."

"It's funny," Shige said, after he was sure Ryo was done talking. "Cause none of the things you mentioned just now were her vagina."

Ryo's head whipped around on his neck so fast Shige thought it might fly off. He looked torn between shock that Shige had said the word 'vagina' and confusion about why Shige had said the word 'vagina.'

"I can't believe you just said 'vagina,'" Ryo said with awe, and Shige frowned at him.

Shige recalled the way Ryo has stood up to those guys, the way Ryo's shoulders had remained straight and his head high, even though he was significantly smaller and tinier than any of them. He remembered Ryo's defiant eyes, how Ryo had shown his inner strength even as Shige had cowardishly pulled them into the car.

Now Shige had to find his own strength, against the person who had shown him it's importance.

"Listen up, Nishikido." Ryo started at the tone of Shige's voice, and that just made Shige concentrate even harder on maintaining it. "One of your best friends in the world is in there, devastated, because he fell in love with a person, not a man or a woman, a person, who is another of your best friends, and you are out here throwing a temper tantrum because that person happens to have a penis."

Ryo looked ready to argue, to spit some of his famous venom, but Shige wasn't quite finished. "Ryo, if you're willing to lose a friend over something this stupid, you need to grow up." 

Ryo's aghast face, shadowed with rage and turmoil, lingered in Shige's mind long after he left the park, taking the subway back to his apartment. His and Ryo's mugs from that morning sat waiting to be washed on the kitchen table, so Shige brought them over to the sink and ran the hot water, putting a little soap directly on the sponge instead of filling the basin. He made it halfway through washing the second mug before he started to shake.

Shige has always been massively uncomfortable standing up for himself. He's always found it easier to let things slide. It's what's always made him a target for teasing, he supposed.

It had been scary, to stand up to Ryo. To tell Ryo, a man that he admired and respected and had always, _always_ secretly wanted to like him, that he was basically being an asshole. 

But Shige remembered Ryo's words to him, in Osaka, as he had squinted up at Shige, hand above his eyes to protect them from the sun. "You can't let people walk all over you or anyone else. And you can rationalize that they're good people, but in the end, even good people make mistakes."

He remembered the look in Ryo's eyes when Shige managed to tell him a little about his life before Johnny's. 

Ryo had taken care of him then. Shige was taking care of Ryo now-- by helping him realize that this wasn't worth losing his best friends over.

Ryo, Shige knew, was a good person. And maybe what Shige had said would be enough.

It started to rain.

 

***

 

Ryo's hair was wet from the rain outside, plastered to his head and to his neck and face, when Shige opened the door after buzzing Ryo in. "I'm an idiot, right?"

Shige wanted to collapse with relief. "Just right now," Shige said. "Just for now."

"Oh god," Ryo said. "I am a terrible friend," he said, sitting down in Shige's foyer to untie his shoes.

Shige retreated into his bedroom and returned with a pair of athletic pants and a t-shirt. Ryo stood up and took them in his arms. "I'm a really terrible person."

"Don't be ridiculous," Shige said. "Go change."

When Ryo emerged from the washroom in the dry clothes, Shige pressed a cup of cocoa into his hands. "I feel like a little kid," Ryo said, because Shige's t-shirt was a little tthe large, the sleeves reaching Ryo's elbows, and the pants were cuffed twice at the bottom to keep Ryo from tripping on them. "It sometimes feels like I'm the only normal sized person on the planet."

"Whatever helps you sleep at night," Shige told him, sipping slowly from his own chocolate. "Careful, it's hot."

"Oh is it? The steam confused me, I thought that meant it was cold," Ryo said sarcastically, before he deflated in Shige's favorite leather armchair. "God, I'm even a dick when people are trying to be nice to me."

"It's your way of relaxing, I suppose," Shige said, half laughing. 

"Wow, do I have any redeeming qualities?"

"You might," Shige said. "But I'll only tell you about them if you call Yamapi or Jin right now. Or both."

"Can't I just admit I'm wrong to you privately and not face the consequences of my own jackassery until a later time, when this has all blown over?" Ryo set his mug on the table and buried his face in his hands. Shige, for some reason, wanted to put his hand on the back of Ryo's neck, and he barely resisted the urge.

"No," Shige said patiently, and handed Ryo his backpack, which he'd left in the foyer. "Not if you don't want to lose your two best friends."

Ryo dug around in the front pocket of his bag until he found his cell phone, and he flipped it open with trepidation. "I can do this."

"Rah Rah Rah," Shige said, waving his hands in the air like a cheerleader. "Gooooooo Ryo!"

Ryo threw his head back and laughed. When he finally stopped chuckling, he looked a lot better. "Just so you know," Ryo said, as he scrolled through his contacts. "You're...one of my best friends too, now." He narrowed his eyes. "Pretend I said that in some manly and standoffish manner."

"Rah Rah," Shige replied, and Ryo dialed. 

"Pi?" Ryo breathed into the phone, and Shige gathered the two mugs and went into the kitchen. "I'm so fucking sorry," he heard Ryo say, before he turned on the water to give them privacy as he did the dishes from his dinner that still sat in the sink. 

"You're one of my best friends too," Shige whispered, and it was okay that Ryo couldn't hear him, because Shige was pretty sure he knew. Some weird emotion was crawling it's way up the inside of Shige's chest, and he couldn't identify it. All he knew was that Ryo was here, in his apartment, because he wanted to be. And that was enough.

Ryo wandered into the kitchen a little later, his eyes suspiciously puffy, but Shige didn't comment. "How did I manage to fumble through my life before we became closer?" Ryo said, and Shige felt like bursting.

"I'm not quite sure," Shige replied, his voice thick and soppy. "You probably just got hit a lot. In the face."

"Don't cry," Ryo said, his own voice sounding wet. "I hate people who feel things."

Shige choked on his water.

 

***

"Why are you staring at Ryo-chan?" Tegoshi asked, sipping obnoxiously loud on his bubble tea. "You look like a high school girl with her first crush."

"What?"

"I'm just saying."

"I'm going to count to five," Shige said, and Tegoshi bolted, giggling as he ran.

 

***

"Why do we have to have costumes, again?" Ryo grumbled, and Shige laughed.

"Hideous sparkles and glitter are kind of our thing," Shige answered, with an ambivalent shrug. "I've come to accept it as an occupational hazard."

"Your hair is an occupational hazard," Ryo replied half-heartedly, as he encountered something so horrific he drew his hand back with a hiss. "It's an acoustic guitar performance. I want to at least wear jeans while I sing about losing my heart like a sap to some unknown girl from the past."

"It's a good song," Shige said. "It doesn't matter what we wear to perform it."

Suddenly, Ryo went rigid beside him, his hands falling from the clothes as he looked toward the hall.

"Satoko," Ryo said, and Shige looked up from the costume rack to finally see the girl that had stolen Ryo's heart.

She was small, with long straight hair and long eyelashes. Shige couldn't see anything remarkable about her, but he knew there must be if she had captured Ryo so completely. "Nishikido," she replied, and Ryo flinched.

"Not Ryo anymore?" Ryo asked lightly, but there was something wounded in his tone, that made Shige ache.

The girl, Satoko, wrung her hands together like she didn't know what to say. "I just wanted to apologize," she said quickly, sounding a little breathless, like she was rushing to get it all out. "For how everything turned out."

"How it turned out?" Ryo laughed, bitterly, and Shige wondered if Ryo felt like he was breaking inside. "Are you happy?"

"Yes," Satoko said, and Shige tried not to look over at them, because he didn't want to see Ryo's expression.

"Then you're not sorry for how things turned out, are you?" Ryo said. "Goodbye, Satoko-- Miyamoto."

"Nishikido!"

"You don't owe me anything," Ryo said, turning around and walking over to Shige, subtly leaning against him for support. "I'm going to be just fine."

"You always were so strong," she said, and then she walked out of the dressing room.

"Are you okay?" Shige asked, after five minutes passed in silence, except for the clanking of beads and Ryo's steady, heavy breathing.

"I thought it would hurt more," Ryo said, after another minute. "To talk to her. But...I didn't feel sad, just angry."

"Angry?"

"Yeah, angry about how she wasn't honest with me, at all, and dragged me along when she knew the whole time she wanted something different."

Shige didn't speak. He could tell Ryo had more to say. 

"But I don't feel heartbroken, or like I want to curl up and die," Ryo continued. "I guess I've fallen out of love."

Ryo's eyelashes were dark against the pale skin of his cheeks as Shige looked down at him, and his mouth was set in a straight line. Strands of his hair fell haphazardly around his forehead, dark as crow feathers. He looked like the brooding hero of a gothic novel, Shige thought, dark and handsome and sad.

"I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing," Shige said, and Ryo's face curled into a small grin.

"Definitely good," Ryo replied, before running his hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face. "But there were nice memories, too."

Shige dropped his hands from where he had been aimlessly looking at costumes. "Let's go."

"Go where?" Ryo asked. "We have to be here in forty minutes, give or take."

"Just to the park across the street," Shige told him, grabbing the sleeve of Ryo's jacket and tugging. 

"But _why,_?" Ryo said, even as Shige was corralling him out the door, grabbing his messenger bag and ushering Ryo out the door.

"What are we doing out here?" Ryo said. "Are you going to kidnap me? You're not a big enough celebrity to get away with that."

Shige groaned. "I'm going to teach you how to take a picture."

"Um, don't you just hold the camera up, and press one of those buttons?" Ryo asked as Shige took his camera out of his bag, and unearthed the actual camera from it's protective case. 

"Technically, yes," Shige replied. "But realistically, no, it's greater than that." 

"I wish you wouldn't talk to me like one of your smartie-pants Aoyama law school friends," Ryo said. "Because when you talk all artsy and metaphorical I kind of want to hit you."

"Realistically is not a hard word," Shige said, and then he cleared his throat. "What I'm trying to say is, the hard part about taking a picture isn't in actually pressing the button and taking the picture."

"Okay..."

"The hard part is knowing what image you want to save. What part of a scene you want to immortalize, or what detail you want to showcase."

"I see," Ryo said, looking contemplative. 

"That way," Shige said, not looking at Ryo, "Next time you feel something, you can save it. You can keep it like a memory."

"Ah," Ryo said, and then he cleared his throat. "So teach me."

"Look at this leaf," Shige said, gesturing to a leaf on the ground by Ryo's right foot. "What about it is interesting?" 

"It's a leaf," Ryo said deadpan, but then he squatted down to look more closely. "It's torn."

"And?"

"It's got an interesting shape."

"Good," Shige said, and handed Ryo the camera, after removing the lens cap and adjusting the settings. "Now take a picture of it."

"But I don't know how to use this camera!" Ryo protested, and Shige laughed. 

"Just press the button," he replied, and Ryo gingerly took the camera. He snapped a photo and then handed the camera back up to Shige, who promptly squatted next to him. "Let's see."

The picture popped up on the display, and Ryo frowned. "There's too much other stuff," he said, and Shige grinned. 

"Exactly," Shige said. "Half of taking a good picture is composition. Try and not get the gum wrapper this time."

Ryo took another picture, and they looked at it together, faces pressed close to peer at the display screen. Shige could feel Ryo's warm breath on his cheek, and for some reason, it made his heart speed up. He felt hot, and he had no idea why. "This one's much better," Ryo said, and Shige's neck went red.

"Yes, it is," Shige replied, standing up and leaving Ryo with the camera.

When he had finished composing himself, he spun around only to find Ryo in his face, and heard the whir of the shutter. "I don't want to take pictures of leaves."

"Take pictures of something else then," Shige said, but Ryo shook his head. 

"Taking pictures is for memories, right? I want memories of you! You said you became an idol so you could be part of a moment right?"

"Yeah," Shige said. "But I wasn't ready."

Ryo chuckled. "Now you know how it feels," Ryo said. "Going on tour with you is like having the paparazzi around, except instead of having to break into the bus, they already have a key."

"Shut up, I am not that bad." He frowned, and Ryo took another picture. 

"Can you capture feelings with a camera?" Ryo asked rhetorically, and Shige took the camera out of his hands, and fiddled with the settings. He looked though the viewfinder and settled the focus on Ryo. Ryo was smiling at him quirkily, his hands shoved in his jeans pockets to fight the autumn chill, and his eyes were alight with mischief. 

Shige felt his heart seize painfully between his ribs, and he'd never felt so terribly alive. And Ryo looked perfect, through the lens, and Shige admired every graceful line of Ryo's small body, lithe and elegant and shadowed through the glass.

"Yes," Shige said, and snapped a picture. "You really can." And Shige wanted to tell him that it wasn't just the subject's feelings, but the photographer's as well.

"Are you okay?" Ryo said, stepping closer. "Your voice sounds weird. Like, you usually sound a little bit dumb, but just now it sounded like you were having a stroke."

"I'm fine," Shige choked, but he wasn't fine, at all, because it had suddenly become clear. 

Shige's palms were sweaty, and his throat so tight that sucking in air was an arduous task, even out here in the middle of the park. 

"If you say so," Ryo said dubiously, and Shige couldn't tear his eyes away from Ryo's mouth, which was perfectly shaped, and could convey so many emotions...

"Let's go back," Shige directed, but his voice was faint. As soon as they walked back into the building, Shige escaped into the bathroom. The camera hung heavy from the neck strap, pulling down on him. He took it off and sat it on the counter, before turning on the faucet and letting the cool water run.

He splashed his face twice, then let his hands fall from his face as he looked into the mirror. He looked sick, Shige thought, green around the edges and eyes filled with fear. "No, no, no, no," Shige said to himself, as water dripped down his neck and soaked the collar of his t-shirt. "Not this," he whispered.

He wiped his hands on his jeans and picked up his camera. He hit the review button, and the picture of Ryo's grinning face filled the display screen. Shige felt like he was on fire, like everything was burning all at once and he didn't know how to put it out, or if he even wanted to.

It wasn't like his first high school crush, or like when he saw a pretty girl he was too shy to approach at a party. Instead, he felt like he'd been speared through the chest, and there was nothing he could do but bleed all those impossible feelings out of his opened heart.

Shige had never been in love, but somehow, Koyama had been right; when he finally felt it, he knew exactly what it was.

 

***

 

"Your pictures," Shige said, and he handed the bundle of yesterday's photos to Ryo. Their hands brushed, and Shige snatched his hand away quickly.

"Are you okay?" Ryo queried. "You look exhausted. Did you not sleep last night? I knew you looked sick." Ryo looked down at the photos in his hands. "Are these contaminated by your cooties?" 

Shige laughed, and his sleep deprivation headache twinged. "I'm not sick," he said, and then closed his eyes as Ryo opened the pictures.

"Where are yours?"

"Hmm?" Shige asked, opening his heavy lids again to look at Ryo, before remembering it was a bad idea, because Ryo was going to be just as gorgeous and unattainable as he was yesterday, and would be tomorrow. "My pictures?"

"Yes," Ryo said. "I never trust a teacher for whom I've only seen limited work. The only photos of yours I've seen are the New York photos of Koyama, and the ones on your blog."

"Ahh," Shige replied. "Well--"

"Are you busy today?" 

"What?" 

"After work," Ryo said impatiently. "I don't have any Kanjani stuff to do today, so I'm free. Why don't I come home with you and you can show me your pictures."

There was no reason to say no, so Shige nodded. "Okay," he said.

When they arrived at Shige's place after rehearsal, Ryo immediately collapsed on the couch, and Shige brought them both a glass of water from his kitchen. "You look so tired," Ryo said. "I'm a little nervous that you're actually a zombie that's going to eat my flesh, but I feel like if you were a zombie, you wouldn't have bothered with your contacts this morning."

"I'll get some sleep tonight," Shige said, and licked his lips. _I hope._

"You'd better. Your hair is enough of an eyesore that people will be overwhelmed with the tragedy of your appearance if you start looking like one of those people who stay in their rooms their whole lives watching low budget anime films."

"Those people have a disease, Ryo, and you shouldn't--"

"I know, I know," Ryo said, waving his hand and dismissing Shige's protests. Shige sat down on the opposite end of the couch from Ryo and Ryo automatically shifted closer, and Shige could feel the heat of him even through his sweatshirt.

Shige wanted to move away from Ryo, to sit as far away as he possibly could from the source of his confusion, but Ryo kept stubbornly sliding closer. "You promised you'd show me your pictures," Ryo said, and Shige jumped up to go get his album from the bedside table.

"Yes, my pictures. I'll be right back." Shige escaped to his room, closing the door behind him and leaning back against it, his heart attempting, it seemed, to beat itself right out of his chest. The album sat right where it always sat, and Shige picked it up with trembling hands.

"Here," he said, and Ryo smiled up at him, and Shige wondered if he was going to fall apart into a million pieces from his own nervous shaking. 

Shige wished, more than anything, that he could go back to before, where he didn't know why his stomach clenched when Ryo smiled, and he didn't know why his heart beat faster when Ryo sat too close, or why all he could see were Ryo's dark, piercing eyes when he closed his own.

Ryo's eyes eagerly devoured page after page of Shige's album, a smile tugging at his lips at some of the photographs, and others made him tilt his head to the side to examine it from another angle. "Shige these are amazing," Ryo said, and Shige's heart leapt into his throat at the expression in Ryo's eyes. "Like, really amazing."

"Not really," Shige said in response, looking anywhere but at Ryo. He tried to fight all the _feelings_ that kept bubbling up in his chest, but it seemed like now that he knew what they were, they wouldn't be denied, clamoring for every scrap of his attention and every last bit of his sanity.

It didn't help that it was all so _hopeless_ , that no matter what Shige did, or how close he and Ryo became, he would never be what Ryo was looking for, because he would never be a woman. 

"Shige," Ryo said, and Shige looked down at the album. The pictures under Ryo's fingers were from months ago. Shige remembered taking them-- remembered the way the shadows had played with the angles of Ryo's face, the way he had noticed the grace of Ryo's small but lithe form for the first time. "Shige, these photos..."

Shige could feel the weight of Ryo's gaze heavy on his neck, and he looked up to Ryo's awed expression. "Yeah?" Shige asked, wondering if Ryo could see all his confusion and fear and desire all wrapped up in his eyes. 

"You made me look..." Ryo laughed awkwardly, like he didn't know how to phrase it. "You made me look kind of beautiful."

 _You **are** kinda beautiful,_ Shige wanted to say. The photographer captures what he sees, and Shige had always considered himself a true photographer. _This is my honesty._

Ryo frowned at him. "What's wrong?" 

"Nothing," Shige replied, but it clawed at his throat. _Everything._

***

Koyama towered over his spread out body, blocking the sun as he looked down at Shige. The concrete of the roof felt hot on Shige's back, and he probably wasn't improving his already abysmal vision by looking directly into the sun. But somehow, up here, everything hurt a little less than it did under the stage lights or the soft lamps of his apartment. It was like the sun burned away all his feelings and he was left empty and hollow until he went back to rehearsal and Ryo's candid grin filled him up again.

"You look lost," Koyama said, sitting down next to him.

"I am," Shige responded, turning his head slightly to the side so he could look up at Koyama's profile. 

"Why so lost?" Koyama asked, his warm brown eyes filled with concern. 

"I don't know," Shige said, turning back to the sun. "I guess I'm in love." Saying it out loud made it slam into him so hard he thought he might drown in it. _Love._ It was nothing like he'd imagined it would be, nothing like the characters in dramas or the heroes in famous novels, nothing like a fairy tale, and nothing like his adolescent dreams. It was harsher than that, more raw and unmanageable and painful. It was like slowly to death, and then opening your eyes and realizing that you were still alive, only to feel that death again at each friendly expression or warm touch that meant nothing like what you wish it did.

"That's great!" Koyama said, and Shige admired his optimism.

"It doesn't seem so great."

"Shige is just experiencing the tough part of love," Koyama said, waggling his eyebrows. "It's complicated, but... There's good parts too, right?"

The way Ryo's hands moved his to the right string on the guitar. The way Shige felt when Ryo stood up for him against his childhood bullies. Ryo's warm arms around him as the rain fell, soaking them both. Shige had felt so warm, so loved. "Yeah, there are."

"Even unrequited love can be a little bit wonderful, Shige. Just remember that love is a gift! That you give to someone." Koyama finally collapsed down next to Shige. "When I give gifts on Christmas, I'm not doing it because I want something back. I'm doing it because I want to, because that person deserves to be given a gift."

"What if..." Shige recalled, suddenly, the look on Ryo's face the night he found out about Yamapi and Jin. "What if that person doesn't want my gift? What if my gift makes them uncomfortable or angry?"

"Shige is a wonderful person," Koyama told him, looking very serious all of a sudden. "Shige wouldn't give his love to someone who wasn't also wonderful."

Shige's heart felt tight. “Love is the most beautiful of dreams and the worst of nightmares."

"What?"

"Shakespeare," Shige said, and Koyama sighed.

"Sometimes the answer isn't in a book, Shige, or in someone else's romance."

"What do you mean?"

"Your situation isn't the same as some character in a Shakespeare novel, Shige. It's not going to play out like in a book."

"I know that already," Shige said sadly. "Because I think my happy ending might be impossible with... this person." 

"Ryo is older than you, but he's still growing up too," Koyama said then, and Shige turned to look at him in shock. "Shige should be honest, but Shige might have to wait awhile for Ryo-chan to figure things out." Koyama grinned at him, and his eyes narrowed, giving his face a cat-like experience. He looked like Nyanta when Shige had snuck him a bit of mackerel sushi despite Koyama's ban on table food.

Shige was surprised into a laugh, and once he started laughing he couldn't stop. "You're amazing," Shige told him, feeling free for the very first time since he'd figured out his feelings. "How did you know?"

"It's my job to protect the member- _ai_ ," Koyama said solemnly. "No matter what kind of _ai_ it happens to be."

Shige imagined the heat of Ryo's arm around his waist as they sang the final, climactic chorus of their duet, guitars hanging from their necks, and his heart couldn't decide whether to sink or fly. 

"Don't make that face!!" Koyama said worriedly. "It makes me feel like I've failed in cheering you up!"

"Sorry," Shige managed, and Koyama pressed their arms together. The push of Koyama's thin arm against his was an anchor, and Shige finally felt like he might not drown in all the confusion after all.

"You're my precious baby~ I will love you forever~" Koyama sang at him, and Shige gathered him up in a big bear hug. 

"Thank you," Shige said, his voice caught between laughing and sobbing.

"Well of course," Koyama said, and his voice sounded on the verge of weeping as well. "That's what friends are for." 

 

***

The blank music sheets were spread across the floor in front of them. Ryo sat on the arm of the couch, while Shige sat cross-legged on the floor, a guitar in his lap.

Ryo's head was tilted back, exposing the pale, smooth column of his throat. His hair fell behind him, a little too long, a little too unruly. "What if we made the bridge go higher, like this?" Ryo asked, and then hummed a few notes, and Shige nodded, scribbling down the notes on one of the blank sheets. 

"Like my heart is made of glass, you look through it and shatter it," Shige said, and it fit perfectly to Ryo's melody.

"Youre lyrics have gotten better." Ryo blinked twice. "It's like you know what you're saying. We're a good team," Ryo said, smirking. "I'm clearly the best, but you're a good sidekick."

"Whatever," Shige retorted, rolling his eyes. "You're useless without me. If I'm the sidekick, you must be, like, the Green Hornet, whose sidekick always has to bail him out of trouble."

"Firstly, you are a nerd," Ryo protested. "Secondly, I am excellent in combat situations." He struck a karate pose, and in doing so, unbalanced himself, falling back onto the couch with an 'oomph' and a swear.

"Yes, excellent, I can see that," Shige said, and cracked his neck.

"Don't do that," Ryo said with a wince, either at the mild pain in his back or at Shige's neck crack. "You look like a creepy flesh-eating alien when you move your head like that. You probably wouldn't if you got a haircut."

"I like my hair fine the way it is," Shige said and Ryo quirked his lips.

"That's because you're _blind,_ " Ryo informed him. "You look in the mirror and you can't even see yourself. When I look at you I want to wrap you in lights and sing ' Glory to the Newborn King'."

"Ha ha," Shige said. "You're so funny. I just don't know how I contain myself." Shige's voice was wry, and at Ryo's sharp laugh, Shige felt his stomach flop. 

Ryo laughing was gorgeous, and free, his square straight teeth revealed by his wide-stretched mouth, and Shige wanted... Every moment Shige spent with Ryo pulled him deeper into love, and Shige despaired of ever escaping.

Still, like Koyama had said, love had good parts, too, and the way Shige felt right in that moment would make a great love song.

Ryo licked his lips, and smiled at Shige. "Sometimes, I think my greatest mistake was not getting to know you sooner," Ryo said, and his words lanced their way through Shige, all the way down to his bones, settling deep inside of him and making him feel like he was going to explode.

"Don't," Shige said, looking down at the guitar. The honey-colored wood was shining under his fingertips, and Shige could still hear their voices soaring together. "Don't say things like that."

"What?" Ryo said. He looked at Shige, bewildered. "What's the big deal?" Ryo tugs on the hem of his thin sweater, like he always did when he was going to say something emotional or out of character. "It's just, you're one of my best friends now, and I regret not seeing how much we had in common sooner. How, I dunno, interesting and amazing you are."

"I can't," Shige replied, and he didn't know what the end of the sentence should be. _I can't lie to you anymore_ would be good, or _I can't pretend that I don't love you_. Maybe the real answer was _I can't make myself fall out of love with you, even though I know it's hopeless to dream you'll ever love me back._ But words failed Shige, and he was left staring speechless at his own hands gripped too tight around the neck of the guitar. The tuning screws dug into his hands, and he wondered if they were sharp enough to make him bleed.

"You can't what? I don't understand, Shige. Your brain waves aren't quite reaching the shore."

The frustration of the past month, the aching of his heart and the uncomfortable churning in his belly suddenly became too much to bear, too much to keep silent about. "I like you," Shige said, and it felt like a weight had lifted off his shoulders, and even though it still hurt, Shige felt like he'd done something important.

"Is that what you were trying to say? I thought I was the emotionally stunted one. I like you too. It's why we're friends, not just co-workers."

Shige couldn't make the words stop. "No, I like you. I like you like Yamapi likes Jin. Like you liked Satoko," Shige looked up, and Ryo was staring at him slack-jawed and wide-eyed. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that I love you. Am in love with you."

Ryo's mouth was opening and closing like a fish pulled suddenly to land, like he was searching for air but not finding it anywhere in the room. "Shige," he finally gasped out, before his face closed up, locking down all his emotions behind a still expression.

Shige had always been impressed with Ryo's ability to switch emotions so quickly.

Still, to see Ryo's face so still, so unreadable, was painful, because it had been a long time since Ryo had shown that face to him.

"I'm sorry," Shige offered, and his hands were numb around the neck of the guitar. The fabric of the strap was scratching at his neck, too, he thought abstractly, and Ryo's sweater had slipped sideways on his shoulder, and Shige wondered if he was cold, because goosebumps had popped up on the exposed skin. "I tried not to."

"Not hard enough," Ryo snapped, and Shige recoiled. Shige had known it wasn't something he should have said, but it wasn't anything he could help, either, anything he could stop.

Shige loved Ryo as surely as the sun rose in the morning and set at night; and maybe as endlessly as that too, because as far as Shige knew, the sun was going to rise and set for the rest of his life. "I'm sorry," he said again, and he wasn't sorry for loving Ryo, he was just sorry that it was going to ruin everything.

"I need to think," Ryo said, pulling a cigarette out of the pack in his pocket with trembling hands. "I just need time to think." He lit the cigarette while it hung between his lips, and they both ignored the shaking of the little white stick. "Fuck, Shige."

Shige swallowed. "I know," Shige said. "I made a mistake."

"A mistake?" Ryo said, meeting Shige's eyes straight on.

"Yeah," Shige said. "I never should have let myself see how beautiful you are."

Ryo exhaled a ring of smoke. "I'm not beautiful," Ryo said simply. "I'm petty and rude and short and grumpy. I hold grudges and I'm selfish and on the verge of being an alcoholic. Any beauty you see in me is imagined."

Shige lifted the guitar strap over his head, and set the guitar in it's case. He zipped the case closed and put it over his shoulder. He was silent for a minute, and his body was flashing between hot and cold.

He turned to look at Ryo one last time, and tried to see the Ryo that Ryo himself saw, but that person was nowhere to be found. "You've got a sharp sense of humor, and a big heart that gets hurt easily, so you keep your distance from the people who have burned you before. You hate being embarrassed, but you blush all the time and so you're always pouting. You stand up for your friends, even when..." Shige pulled at the collar of his shirt, trying to make it easier to breathe. "Even when your friends can't stand up for themselves. And you're sometimes a little thick, but in the end you always come around, because the people you love are more important to you than anything."

Shige walked past Ryo toward the door. "You make me seem... kind of beautiful," Ryo said, his voice hoarse and choked and angry and sad all at once. Shige doesn't have to turn around to know that Ryo is looking at him, searching his profile for answers that Shige doesn't really have.

"Because to me, you are," Shige responded, and then he walked out of the door. He pretended, as he walked down the stairs in Ryo's apartment building, that he wasn't crying, but when he got into his car, his eyes were too blurred to see the road.

 

***

The awkward silence between Shige and Ryo at rehearsal was hard to bear, because Shige, now that he had had Ryo's friendship, craved the presence of Ryo by his side, making acerbic comments about the juniors and doing terrible impersonations of Yamapi whenever Yamapi wasn't looking. 

Koyama seemed to sense that something was amiss, like he always did, and he stuck close to Shige, offering small smiles whenever Shige looked in his direction.

"Did you two finish that song?" Yamapi asked Shige, during lunch. "If you did, we could perform it at the next live."

"I don't know if we'll ever finish it," Shige said, and Yamapi looked up at him solemnly. 

"Is that so?" Yamapi asked. A ramen noodle hung from his lower lip, and Shige didn't feel even the slightest urge to touch his mouth.

"It feels like the sort of song that might never find it's ending," Shige said. "Like we might be looking for the ending for a long time."

"You're not usually the type who can deal with things being left unfinished. You're kind of like Kamenashi in that."

"I've learned that not everything has an ending," Shige replied. "And not everything can be neatly tied off just because I want it to be."

"That's not a very lawyerly thing to say, Shige," Yamapi teases, but his eyes are still serious. "Who the heck are you these days?"

"I don't know," Shige answered honestly. "But there's something beautiful in the unfinished ends, even though it hurts."

"That's true," Yamapi said. "Good luck on your song."

When Shige got home, he wrote the rest of the lyrics and emailed them to Ryo.

A reply email came at about five in the morning, and the only thing in the message was a thumbs up.

Shige smiled.

 

***

"I still don't know," Ryo told him, when Shige walked into rehearsal his usual ten minutes early to see Ryo leaning back against the mirrors. "What to think, even, let alone what to tell you."

Shige studied the line of Ryo's hunched shoulders, and somehow felt calm, even though the churning fear and anxiousness in his gut had kept him from sleeping or eating well in days. It had been two weeks, and this was the first time they had really talked since Shige had left Ryo's apartment after confessing his love. "That's alright," Shige said. "It took Jane Austen sixteen years to write 'Pride and Prejudice', and that was worth the wait."

"Who the hell is Jane Austen?" Ryo said, to the ceiling. "I don't know when I'll be finished thinking about it."

"Are we still going to be friends?" Shige asked, and when Ryo didn't answer immediately he felt his stomach sink all the way to the floor. He wanted to throw up, or cry or something, but then Ryo started speaking again.

"I have no idea. I...really hope so," Ryo responded, and the confusion and softness in his voice made Shige hope too.

"Well, you know where to find me, when you figure it out," Shige said, and Ryo nodded as Tegoshi bounced in, his hair in some horrible glittery puff that brought a grin to Shige's face. 

 

***

"You going to be okay?" Koyama asked, and Nyanta climbed slowly up Shige's back. Shige sneezed profusely, and Koyama laughed.

"Not if your cat doesn't get off me," Shige said. "It's like Nyanta knows I'm allergic and so he won't leave me alone!"

"Shige is just too likable, is all," Koyama said, calmly mixing whatever ingredients were in the mixing bowl when Shige arrived five minutes ago. "Maybe Nyanta is worried about you too."

"I'm fine," Shige said. "Or I will be."

"That's good," Koyama replied, before he dug his spoon into his concoction and lifted a heaping spoonful toward Shige's mouth. "Cookie dough?"

"Sure," Shige said, and the sweetness of the batter cut through the layer of bitter misery that lay on his tongue, flavoring everything with the sadness of unrequited love. "It's delicious."

"I'm an expert on fixing heartbreak, too," Koyama said wisely. "Part of my member- _ai_ protection duties."

 

***

 

Shige didn't know what made him walk into the salon, but when he walked out, his hair cropped short, an inch and a half from his scalp, he felt naked, and strangely free.

 

***

 

It seemed a bit perfect that Ryo found him on the roof, the wind whipping through his much shorter hair, tossing it into disarray. Ryo's hair was also tousled, and his face looked red and chapped from the fierce wind. "I went to your apartment first," Ryo said, when he was close enough that Shige could hear him without him having to yell. "But it totally figures that you're up here brooding like the Hunchback of Notre Dame."

Shige offered Ryo a half-smile, before turning back to his view of the city. "I'm not brooding," Shige replied. "I'm thinking deep thoughts about the universe."

"You're thinking about cheesy lines for a song about unrequited love and fighting loneliness, and don't even pretend you aren't," Ryo said. "Don't bullshit me, I am the king of bullshit and there's no room on my throne for amateurs."

Shige laughed, and it sounded a little sharp but it also sounded real. Ryo grinned, walking closer and standing next to Shige. The heat from his body bled through the chill that Shige had felt surrounded by since he walked up onto the windy roof. "You're so mean to me," Shige said.

"It's my way of showing I care," Ryo replied, and Shige didn't need to look to know Ryo was staring at him, because he could feel his eyes trying to see through him. Shige just nodded, and the two of them stood quietly for a few minutes, taking in the skyline from the roof of Shige's apartment building. "You got a haircut," Ryo said, and Shige nodded again. 

"Yeah," Shige said, and coughed. "About time, right?"

"I liked it before," Ryo said. "You were a hedgehog, but you were _our_ hedgehog."

"And now?"

Ryo looked at Shige, and his face flushed, and he turned away again. "It looks good. Suits you."

They were quiet again, but it wasn't uncomfortable.

Shige felt like he was at the very top of a cliff, about to jump. He wasn't sure if he was going to fall or fly, but he knew he couldn't just stand on the edge anymore. He'd have to take the chance of falling, because waiting at the precipice for eternity was a terrifying prospect. His heart slammed against his ribs and his throat felt dry as sandpaper, and...

"The silence doesn't feel empty, with you," Ryo said suddenly, and Shige's head snapped around to look at him. Ryo's eyes are on the sunset. "I've always liked that about you, even before I got to know you like I do now." Ryo licked his lips, and Shige swallowed. It hurt. "I'm going to talk now, and you're not going to interrupt me to tell me there are no penguins in Alaska or that the human body is 95 percent water, or--"

"Sixty," Shige said, then bit his lip, and Ryo snorted. 

"Shut up, dweeb. Didn't I say not to interrupt?" Ryo took a deep breath. "If you interrupt, I might not say everything I need to."

"Okay," Shige said. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his autumn jacket, more to keep himself from playing with his hair or glasses than to keep his hands warm. 

"I can count the things I know about love on one hand." Ryo smiled as he said it, and held up his hand. "One," he said, wriggling his index finger, "is that love makes you think even weird things about people are cute or endearing." Shige wanted to laugh at Ryo's dubious expression. "Two, when you love someone, you want to be close to them all the time." Now Ryo had two fingers in the air, and he looked nervous and anxious.

The wind blew a piece of hair into Ryo's eyes, and Shige, without thinking, brushed it behind Ryo's ear. When he realized what he had done, Shige shoved his hand back in his jacket, mortified. "Sorry," he mumbled, and Ryo's brow furrowed.

"Three, their touch makes your heart beat faster, like a tiny bird in a cage that wants to fly away." Ryo looked embarrassed to be saying so much, but he looked determined, too. "And four, love can make you reconsider all the things you thought were true, and suddenly things that seemed like rules don't mean that much to you anymore."

Ryo was holding four fingers in the air, and Shige couldn't look away from Ryo's intent gaze. "Four is a lot," Shige said, and Ryo smiled, so softly and hesitantly Shige almost missed it.

"The fifth one was harder to figure out," Ryo said, "because even geniuses like myself can't be the best at everything."

"Like Japanese history?" Shige said, and Ryo scowled at him playfully.

"I am _awesome_ at Japanese history," Ryo replied. "And what did I say about interrupting, pinecone head?"

Shige smiled sheepishly in apology. _It's all going to be okay_ , Shige thought, because no matter what Ryo said now, Shige felt like their friendship would survive it. 

"The fifth thing," Ryo said, wetting his lips again and rubbing anxiously at the hair on the back of his head, making it stick up in a million directions. Shige wanted to laugh, but the sound couldn't make it out past his heart which was all the way up in his throat. "The fifth thing is that those four other things? Those are all things I feel when I think about you."

Time freezes for Shige, like the moment was the perfect photograph. He saw Ryo in his lens, red and anxious and looking at him, directly at him, and saying something he never thought he'd hear.

"I love your stupid fucked up hair, and the way you annoyingly know something about everything," Ryo blurted out, when Shige didn't answer. "And I want to be close to you all the time, because you understand me in a different way than everyone else does. Around you I feel...unfettered, like I can't help but be honest about myself, because you won't let me be anything else."

"Ryo," Shige breathed, and Ryo looked down, examining a crack in the cement beneath their feet. 

"And I... Never thought it was okay, to be in love with a man. But I'm starting to realize, maybe, that love doesn't follow any rules."

And maybe, just maybe, Love was like an earthquake-- unpredictable, terrifying even. But when the hard part was over, you realized just how lucky you truly were.

"Sorry for taking so long, I guess," Ryo said. "But it took what's-her-face--"

"Jane Austen," Shige choked.

"Whatever. Jane Austen. It took her sixteen years to write that chick novel," Ryo said. "And for your information, it took J.K. Rowling seven years to write the first Harry Potter book. And I am worth at least as much a wait as the first Harry Potter book, maybe even the whole series..."

Shige wondered, a little, if he was still breathing, but before he could even contemplate his own actions his hands had fisted in Ryo's jacket. "I didn't know you knew how to read," Shige said, and pulled him up to his mouth.

When their mouths met, it was more like falling than like flying. Shige felt like the ground had disappeared from beneath him, like he had dived into Ryo's soul, and he wanted to just keep falling into this kiss forever.

Ryo's mouth was slick and hot, everything the air wasn't, as the wind blew fiercely against them, stinging Shige's cheeks as he lost himself to Ryo's soft lips. Ryo tasted sweeter than he looked, Shige thought, and for all his posturing he melted easily into Shige's arms, opening beneath Shige's demanding mouth.

Shige relished the feeling of Ryo's pretty straight teeth under his tongue, and the bitter taste of tobacco that lingered with every lick at Ryo's willing mouth.

Ryo wasn't content to just be kissed, though, and he quickly tangled his hands in Shige's newly shorn hair and dragged his face down, allowing Ryo greater access to Shige's mouth and tongue, and Ryo explored thoroughly, canvasing every millimeter of Shige's cheeks. Shige couldn't stop the moans that escaped his throat, and Ryo's soft sighs made him melt even further into Ryo's arms, which had slid down to his waist to pull him closer.

Kissing Ryo, Ryo kissing _him_ , was, in some ways, like waking up from a dream. Ryo's lips were chapped and dry, and Shige pressed against them just a little too hard, and their teeth clacked together. And it was getting colder as the sun disappeared into the horizon, and Shige could feel Ryo shivering in the wind. But Ryo's soft moans as his tongue hesitantly wrapped around Shige's, and the way Ryo's nails dug painfully into Shige's forearms-- well, those were the things that were inexplicably perfect, exactly like falling into a dream, because it was _Ryo_ , his Ryo, who was wonderfully, amazingly, _unbelievably_ kissing him back.

“For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.” Shige said against Ryo's lips, and Ryo grumbled back.

"What the hell is that from?" Ryo said. "Some famous European poet no one but you has ever heard of?"

"Judy Garland," Shige said, and kissed Ryo even harder.

When night fell, and Ryo's lips shone swollen in the dark, that's when Shige finally accepted that this was real; that he wasn't going to wake up in the morning longing for a moment that might never happen, or a touch he might never receive.

There's a sense of triumph in the way his hand finds Ryo's, in the way their fingers fumble around each other in the dark, interlocking as the wind whips around them. He couldn't see the details of Ryo's face, but that was okay, because he memorized them long ago, and he can feel Ryo's accelerated heartbeat through the pulse of his wrist, and the sweat of Ryo's palm as it presses against his own.

"Shige," Ryo whispered, and Shige leaned forward, burying his face in the crook of Ryo's neck, inhaling the scent of jasmine and cigarette smoke. Ryo's breath hitched at the touch of Shige's lips on his neck, gentle butterfly kisses across the goose-pebbled skin. Shige never wanted to stop touching Ryo, just because he could.

"Yes?" Shige whispered back, blowing warm air into Ryo's ear as he released the word from trembling lips. Ryo shivered.

"It's cold," Ryo replied, and Shige squeezed his hand. 

"Then let's go inside," he said, and Ryo shivered again, this time not from the cold at all.

 

***

The door barely closed before Ryo slammed Shige into the wall, his smaller frame pressing against Shige's. Shige winced as his shoulder-blades pressed into the picture frames behind him, but then he couldn't focus on anything beyond the water rushing in his ears as Ryo claimed his mouth completely. 

"Too tall," Ryo hissed, and Shige laughed into Ryo's mouth, his tongue tangling with Ryo's as he clutched at the back of Ryo's jacket, keeping him close. Ryo's hands seemed to be everywhere at once, against Shige's hips and on his back and circling his neck. 

"Lay down," Shige gasped, and Ryo stepped backward. Shige followed his mouth until Ryo pulled completely away, grabbing Shige's hand and guiding him to the sofa. He sat down and Shige followed, straddling him, his thighs on either side of Ryo's hips. Ryo's hands tugged at Shige's jacket, and Shige leaned forward to kiss Ryo again while he shrugged off the jacket. Ryo's hands slid inside his shirt and glided across his ribs, his touch making Shige pant into the slick heat of Ryo's mouth, and Shige's hands found their way into Ryo's hair, wanting to feel closer, somehow. 

Ryo separated from Shige long enough to pull off Shige's shirt, and Shige whined and pulled on Ryo's jacket, so Ryo shed that and his t- shirt as well. 

When they kissed again, Ryo's hands came up to explore the bare skin of Shige's chest, as Shige's own arms wrapped around Ryo's back, his nails dragging across the smooth skin. Ryo growled against Shige's lips, before kissing his way down Shige's neck, nipping at the skin and sucking hard enough to bruise.

"You'll leave marks," Shige groaned, but he couldn't bring himself to give a damn, because Ryo's fingers brushed across his sensitive nipples and Shige wondered if he was going to be consumed by the heat in the room.

"You can't possibly be surprised that I'm a biter," Ryo said, when he released the skin of Shige's clavicle from between his lips. 

"I guess not," Shige started to respond, but then Ryo's hands were fumbling with the fastening to his jeans, and Shige lost the ability to say anything at all.

Ryo's hand wrapped around his cock, and all Shige could do was close his eyes at the pleasure, his hips wanting to thrust up into Ryo's grip. "You look... Really sexy," Ryo panted, and Shige finally undid Ryo's pants. At the first brush of Shige's hand on his cock between them, Ryo bit down hard on Shige's shoulder, making Ryo goran at the contrast between pleasure and pain.

They maintained a steady pace, hands moving in tandem as their mouths met again. "Not like this," Ryo said, when Shige moaned and thrusted his hips toward Ryo's. "Do you have...?"

"Bedroom," Shige said. I have something that I use for..."

"That'll work," Ryo replied, and Shige stood, stepping out of his jeans and underwear, and blushed under Ryo's devouring eyes. Ryo stood too, and followed Shige into the bedroom. 

When they stepped through the door, Ryo shoved Shige onto the bed before losing his pants and climbing on top of him, his hard cock pressing against Shige's navel. Shige reached toward his beside dresser, finding lubrication and a condom with his hand, and placing them next to him as Ryo slowly slid down his body, mouthing wet kisses against his flushed and too sensitive skin.

"Ryo," Shige whispered, and Ryo paused at Shige's hip, placing a solitary kiss where the bone pushed at the skin, and Shige felt the affection in the gesture. He picked up the packet of lube, still unopened, and squished a little onto his fingers.

"I don't know, exactly, what I'm doing," Ryo said, and his voice quivered a bit, with some combination of desire and nervousness, and Shige smiled despite the anxiousness crawling in his own gut.

"We'll figure it out together," Shige said, and then he guided Ryo's hand down between his legs. He felt the press against the tight ring of muscle, and heard Ryo's slight hitch in breathing, and then one of Ryo's was inside of him, and it hurt, but not enough for Shige to want it to stop. 

Ryo watched him carefully, gauging his reactions, and Shige nodded at him, and then Ryo added another finger. "So tight, Shige," Ryo said, his voice low and dark, and Shige wanted to hear more of that tone, wanted to hear Ryo say his name like that over and over again in that sexy voice.

Later, when Ryo slides inside of him with a long, deep moan, and they moved together, Ryo's hot breath on his neck and Ryo's sweat-slick skin sticking to his own, Shige felt like he was still falling, and maybe it was deeper into love. When he came, it was like the world disappeared, and there is only Ryo inside of him and on top of him and everywhere around him, and Shige wouldn't have it any other way.

"I love you," Shige said, when he could speak again, and Ryo, who was collapsed next to him, curled a little closer. 

"I suppose I'm moderately fond of you, too," Ryo said sleepily, but Shige knew Ryo, and he felt like he'd just been promised forever.

 

***

 

Shige rolled over, and Ryo yelped as a piece of his hair got caught under Shige's arm. "Watch the hair, dork."

"A dork is a whale penis," Shige told Ryo, and Shige relished Ryo's choked snort. "So thanks for the compliment." Shige ran his hand through Ryo's hair, and smiled. "Get a haircut."

Ryo froze, and tilted his head slowly to look at Shige through narrowed eyes. "Oh no you did NOT."

Shige grinned cheekily, and now, _now_ he was flying, soaring so high above the clouds he couldn't even see the earth below him. Ryo was still glaring at him, but Shige didn't care, because he could just lean over and capture Ryo's sulky mouth in a wet kiss, and Ryo wouldn't stop him. Ryo would kiss him back. Shige could just keep kissing him and kissing him until morning dragged them both out of bed.

And that's exactly what Shige did.

 

***

 

Ryo was holding the camera curiously in his hands. "You have to take the lens cap off, silly," Shige said, taking the camera from him and removing the protective circle, and adjusting the shutter speed. He held the camera up to his eye, and snapped a few pictures of Ryo staring at him. "Like this."

"Give me that," Ryo said, carefully snatching it from Shige's grasp. He dropped the strap around his neck, and held the camera up backwards, so that the lens was facing him.

"It goes the other way, Ryo-chan," Shige said with a chuckle. "The other way, like I showed you last time!" 

Ryo rolled his eyes. "Oh my god, you are so stupid for a nerd," Ryo replied. "Obviously, I know which way to turn a camera to take a picture."

He reached out and grabbed Shige's wrist, and the touch, even after a month of being together, still made Shige feel like he was impossibly high up in the air, looking down on a perfect world. Ryo yanked Shige to his side, and Shige felt their cheeks press against each other as Ryo turned the camera so it was toward both of their faces. "Be a part of this moment," Ryo whispered, and then he clicked the button.


End file.
